With the freeware version of LiveBrush, you can export your drawings as PNG files. With the $10 paid version, you can export vector files for professional use.

The Interface

While LiveBrush is easy to use, there are no tool-tips to help you get familiar with the interface. In order to get comfortable using LiveBrush, we must first understand the various interface controls.

The Project Bar at the top shows the current project and brush style. It also has buttons for LiveBrush app settings, and saving the project.

The Styles Panel at the top right is the key place where you select brush styles with which to draw. You can create new styles, import and export styles, or rearrange their order.

The most interesting thing however, is that you can select multiple brush styles to draw. It is fun letting your imagination go wild experimenting with different brush styles! It is also useful to preview a style before using it, using the “eye” button.

The different Tools in LiveBrush are shown in a vertical bar at the top right:

• Brush: the main drawing tool. This is a motion-enabled “live brush” as it responds to the speed of your mouse gestures.
• Pen: used to add “points” to previously drawn lines. These points are used as control points for transforming lines.
• Transform: used to transform layers or line points.
• Bucket: standard solid color fill tool.
• Sample: color picker tool.

The Tool Settings panel displays settings for the currently selected tool. For the Brush tool, it provides access to three kinds of settings:

• Brush Behavior: specifies brush response to mouse movements (velocity, friction) and when decorations are attached
• Brush Line: specifies how the line looks at each point, such as width, stroke type, angle, opacity, and color
• Brush Decoration: settings for the graphics attached to your lines in different brush styles

For the Transform tool, the Tool Settings panel gives access to transformation properties for the currently selected line points or layer.

At the bottom is the standard Layers panel to work with layers. You can duplicate, rearrange, remove, transform and flatten layers using this panel.

Drawing and Editing

Drawing is easy! Just select a brush style and draw. Apart from some basic styles, you will find floral, ink splats, fractal, light, smoke, and ribbon styles of brushes. Experiment with different brush behaviors – velocity and friction settings. Try out different Line and Decoration settings.

All graphics are organized in Layers. Use the Layers panel to remove, flatten, or change colors of layers. Click the Transform tool after you’ve drawn a few lines, select a layer, and see how you can move, rotate or resize layers.

Import and Export

Livebrush encourages you to share your drawings with the community. The Livebrush forum is a great place to check out art that others have created. Here is an example from the Livebrush photostream on Flickr:

The File > Import and File > Export menus let you import and export different parts of Livebrush projects such as the whole image, individual layers, brush styles, or a Deco list. New brush styles (Typography, Geometry, etc) and decorations are regularly added to the community, so make sure you check them out to import and use them in your drawings.

Did you like using Livebrush? Share your creations (and experiments) with us in the comments!

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Zooloo consists of the following components that you can use to design your own portal website for free:

• zSocial: Social networking with Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter with single status update across all networks
• Dashboard: Personalized dashboard for news, photos, events, email, etc.
• Site Creator: Website and blog builder with themes and widgets
• Privacy Manager: Control who sees which parts of your website
• Photos/Videos: Online photo organizer and video library
• Calendar: Calendar, address book, reminders and to-do lists
• Entertainment & Shopping: Customized online entertainment for music, movies, etc. and favorite shopping sites

Homepage with Social Networking

The homepage has a search box at the top, zStatus and zSocial on the main page, and widgets on the right to upload photos, access email, calendar and your blog.

zStatus is a status update box from where you can update your status across Zooloo, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Below that is zSocial, where you can interact with these social networks. Clicking the tab each network shows relevant sub-headings: for example, Facebook lets you choose between News Feed, Status Updates, Photos, Wall & Friends.

You can choose the background of your home page from several themes.

Your Dashboard

You pick and choose widgets to create your personalized dashboard. The dashboard is organized with tabs at the top, so you can create multiple tabs for different areas of interest. Clicking Add Widgets opens up a gallery of widgets that you can drag and drop to any tab on your dashboard. Widgets that need access to your login or profile need to be customized from the Options button on that widget.

The widget gallery is quite impressive – some of the popular types include:

• Social Tools – Email, Social Networks, Photo-sharing, etc.
• News Feeds – CNN, New York Times, etc.
• Entertainment – Last.fm, iTunes Media

You can see the list of widgets available in Zooloo here. From within your dashboard, you can listen to podcasts and watch videos without leaving your site. You can rearrange widgets with drag and drop and customize the theme. Your dashboard is private, so nobody else sees it at any time.

Build Your Zooloo Website

With a free Zooloo account, you get a yourname.zooloo.com website for free. Your website includes profile, photo, video, graffiti, blog, and three custom pages. With a $30 annual subscription for Zooloo Plus, you can use it with your own domain name and some extras.

The zCreator website builder is very easy to use. You can choose from different layouts and themes for your website. You add content placeholders by drag and drop and fill them with the text and images to build your website.

Each page of your website is private by default. You can choose to share individual pages, photo albums, and videos publicly, or with specific friends on Zooloo. The privacy settings are easy to use and offer granular control over who sees what on your website.

Blogging and Graffiti

Zooloo also offers a simple interface to add a blog to your website. The blogging service supports categories, comments, and photos/videos. You can also import your blog from Blogger.

Graffiti is Zooloo’s social bookmarking or clipping service. Using a bookmarklet from any browser, you can quickly clip a link, photo, or video on your Graffiti page. Graffiti posts also have comments so you can comment on your friends Graffiti items.

More About Zooloo

Zooloo is an easy-to-use, attractive option for non-geeks to have their own website and a central place for social networking and infotainment. The owners of the site say that they are not competing with established social networks like Facebook, but complementing them. There are already over 20,000 users of Zooloo from each state in the US and 76 countries. Users are buying from within their shopping malls inside Zooloo using PayPal. There are plans for an iPhone application as well.

Will you try out Zooloo or recommend it to someone? Do you prefer any other free website/dashboard service? Let us know in the comments!

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LAlarm is a free laptop security alarming software. It has several different alarms to help protect your laptop, the most important of them being the Theft Alarm.

Install LAlarm

Download and install the free laptop security software here. LAlarm is free for personal use, and version 4.0 works with Windows Vista, XP (SP2 or SP3). On Windows 7, you can try the latest beta version 5.0. The download is less than 1MB, and the setup program looks the same as the main program that you launch after installation.

LAlarm runs as a background process when you start your laptop. In my tests, it took up an insignificant 7.5MB of memory, so you probably won’t even notice that it is running.

Improve Laptop Security and Protect Against Theft

Securing your laptop is simple and can be done in two ways:

1. If your laptop is connected to a power outlet, simply lock it with the Win+L key shortcut

2. If there is no power outlet available:

a) Use a neck-strap or USB extension cord with any old flash drive and insert it into a USB port

b) Tie the neck-strap or cord to a firm table

c) Lock the laptop with the Win+L shortcut

The LAlarm website shows an example of how this is done:

That’s it. Now, when someone attempts to steal your laptop, either the power cord or the USB flash drive will get disconnected from the laptop. This triggers the Theft Alarm, and the thief will get a nasty shock because the laptop will emit a loud siren like a car alarm. In my testing, I was worried about neighbors rushing to see what was happening! The alarm stops only when you unlock the laptop by entering your login credentials.

For additional laptop security, you can also enable the Inattention Alarm in the Options > Alarm tab. This will trigger if there is a specified period of inactivity on your laptop in unsafe zones. Let’s see what “unsafe zones” are next.

Restrict Laptop Use To A Safe Area

You can use IP addresses to define “Safe Zones” in which your laptop is considered safe. If anyone tries to use it outside the pre-defined safe zones, it triggers the Perimeter Alarm.

The Inattention Alarm also makes use of these zones, so that alarms don’t go off when you take a lunch break at work.

Email and SMS Alerts

After installation, one of the first things you probably want to do is setup email alerts for the alarms, for which you can only use a Gmail account and need to supply your Gmail password. As this is software installed locally on your laptop, you need not be concerned about supplying your Gmail password. LAlarm sends you a test email to verify that the email is working properly.

You can also configure SMS alerts to your mobile phone using Email-to-SMS gateways. Note that these alerts will work only if there is an Internet connection present at the time of laptop theft.

Automatically Destroy Data In Case Of Theft

In case your laptop does get stolen, you can configure LAlarm to automatically destroy pre-defined data folders. You set these via the Options > Destruction tab.

In addition to destroying data, you can also run any custom programs you want to execute in case of theft from the Options > Theft Response tab.

Battery and Disk Protection Alarms

LAlarm also has Disk and Battery protection to help you maximize your laptop battery life and warn you of impending hard disk failure. The battery alarm is triggered at low battery levels that you can customize, and works with Li-ion type batteries.

Doesn’t this laptop security software sound too good to be free? Will you use it to protect your laptop against theft? Let us know in the comments!

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You can’t upgrade from 32-bit to Windows 7 64-bit without doing a fresh “clean” install, which requires you to reinstall all applications from scratch. Therefore, you need to decide on either 32-bit or 64-bit before you install Windows 7.

While I recommend you go with 64-bit, read through this article to make an informed decision.

Background: What is 32-bit and 64-bit?

32-bit and 64-bit are computer architectures that specify the length of data types and addresses that are supported. What this means for the average user is how much memory can be used effectively and how powerful the number-crunching capacity of the CPU is.

Since Windows XP was originally only released as a 32-bit operating system, and because older hardware have 32-bit device drivers, application development on the Windows platform has been slow in moving to 64-bit. However, after both Windows XP and Vista were released in 64-bit, Microsoft is now pushing 64-bit strongly, and you can expect application developers to take advantage of 64-bit computing soon.

Should You Buy 32-bit or 64-bit Windows 7?

Fortunately, you do not need to worry about all this when purchasing a computer or Windows 7. If you are buying a new PC from a vendor, it will ship with 64-bit Windows pre-installed if the configuration supports 64-bit. If you buy retail boxed versions of Windows 7, they will include both 32-bit and 64-bit editions, except for the Home Basic edition.

Advantages of 64-bit

There are several benefits of going to Windows 7 64-bit:

• With 32-bit Windows, you can use a maximum of 4GB RAM. 64-bit Windows 7 runs very fast with 4GB and you can upgrade your RAM to 8 or 16 GB later, making your system future-proof.
• A 32-bit OS can theoretically use up to 4 GB of RAM, but 32-bit versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7 see a maximum of 3.12 GB. With 64-bit Windows 7, you can use the full 4GB RAM.
• You get better security with 64-bit Windows. All 64-bit device drivers are digitally signed, which means you will not have random crashes. You also get more advanced security features like Kernel Patch Protection with 64-bit Windows 7.
• Since 64-bit systems process more information and support greater RAM, Windows 7 is more responsive when you are running complex applications or many applications simultaneously. If you use graphics applications like Photoshop, video editing, games, CAD, etc., you should go 64-bit.
• Not all applications have 64-bit versions that take advantage of the 64-bit architecture, but you can expect more of them after Windows 7 goes mainstream. Meanwhile, most 32-bit applications work fine under 64-bit Windows. If any of them don’t for some reason, you can reasonably expect the application developers to fix any issues, because a lot of people will be running 64-bit Windows.

Check If Your PC Supports 64-Bit Windows 7

If you have bought or upgraded your computer in the past couple of years, with an Intel Core 2 Duo or equivalent/higher processor, your PC is already equipped to run 64-bit Windows 7. If you want to make sure, you can do any of the following:

• If you are running 32-bit Windows Vista, go to Control Panel > System and Maintenance > Performance Information and Tools. Click View and print details. In the System section, you can see whether your PC is 64-bit capable.
• You can use the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor to find out if your system can run 64-bit Windows 7.
• Check the Windows 7 Compatibility Center to see if your devices have 64-bit drivers.

When You Should Use 32-bit

There are some situations in which you are better off using 32-bit Windows 7:

• If you use only 2GB of RAM, and do not plan to upgrade anytime soon. To really take advantage of 64-bit Windows 7, you need minimum 4GB RAM.
• You have legacy devices like scanners and printers that do not have 64-bit device drivers. 32-bit drivers are not supported under 64-bit Windows 7, so you should make sure all the devices you need to use are compatible with 64-bit.
• You run old 16-bit applications that were developed for Windows 3.1 or DOS. These won’t run under 64-bit Windows.

Did this post clear your doubts about 32-bit and 64-bit Windows versions? Is your system ready for 64-bit Windows 7? Feel free to share and ask any questions in the comments!

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IMSLP / Petrucci Music Library

Listed by PC Magazine as one of the Top 100 Websites of 2009, this site is a treasure trove of free public domain sheet music, as well as a thriving community of music lovers. There are over 39,000 scores for 18,000+ works and thousands are being added every month. You will find multiple versions of sheets for popular works, all available for download as PDF files. While some PDFs are typeset using software and are clearer, some are scanned versions.

The International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) or Petrucci Music Library has its own forum where you can participate in general music discussion, send score requests, etc. You can also follow the IMSLP on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook. Suffice it to say that if the sheet music of the classical work you’re looking for is not available here, you’re probably a professional musician who should not be looking for free websites to download sheet music!

The Choral Wiki (CPDL)

The Choral Public Domain Library (CPDL), specializes in choral music and has over 10,000 different works. Apart from scores, you can find lyrics, translations, and information about composers. Most scores are available as downloadable PDF files, some are also accompanied by MIDI files, while others are linked to clearly marked external websites.

CPDL supports advanced search so that you can search scores by title, composer, period, genre, voicing, and even lyrics. You can also browse in different ways such as alphabetically, by category, by composer, etc. CPDL is a community driven website, with over 500 contributors, so you can add your own scores and contribute to it.

Mutopia

Mutopia offers free sheet music to print for over 1600 classical works. You will find all the popular composers like Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Mozart and works for all types of instruments like Piano, Violin, Guitar, Cello and Organ. You can browse by Instrument, Composer, or Style. The Advanced Search is very impressive, allowing you to search using various filters.

Again, this is a volunteer-driven project, using the LilyPond software to create beautiful A4 or Legal sized sheets. For each work, you get PDF or PostScript files as well as MIDI files, along with a preview image and basic information about the musical work.

Free Sheet Music.Net

This site is a combination of free sheet music hosted within the site and a searchable directory of links to other websites for sheet music. I suggest you browse the sheet music downloads within that site here, rather than experimenting with the search or clicking the advertisements.

The number of sheet music downloads is quite limited. The reason this website was worth including in this list is because of the free articles available here. This assorted collection of articles ranges from beginner guides for different instruments to information about sheet music, instruments, etc.

Free Scores

Free Scores has almost 15,000 free sheet music scores available for download as PDF files. Their search is quite impressive, as you can search in many different ways: by instruments, composers, etc. For example, within works for Piano, you can search by style (genre), and instrumentation (piano solo, or with specific other instruments). Many music sheets have accompanying MIDI or MP3 files.

If you are a composer or musician, you can register for free on the site to distribute your own music. While most of the sheet music on the site is classical and in public domain, some contemporary composers have added their own music to this site for sharing.

ABC Music.Net

This is a rare website that offers free piano sheet music downloads for popular modern tunes. You will find 270+ tunes from the Beatles to Celine Dion and Justin Timberlake. You can browse alphabetically, or by search by artist or song name. The sheets are clear PDF files, downloaded as .ZIP archives. You can register to become a member and upload your contributions.

ABC Music has their own Twitter account and Facebook fan page as well, but unfortunately there don’t seem to be any updates to the site or these accounts since May ‘09. If you are interested in getting sheets for modern songs, grab it from here while it lasts.

Did we miss any quality site for free sheet music that is your favorite? Did you get the sheets for the works you were looking for? Do tell us in the comments!

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Zakta differs from traditional search engines in these key areas:

• Personalize and edit your search results
• Automatically save your search results
• Share your saved search results as a social network search with others as Guides
• Collaborate on a search with family or colleagues, just like you do on shared documents

If you are searching for quick factoids of information, you are better served by traditional search engines. However, if you’re planning a vacation or trip, researching a health ailment, exploring the best affordable university to get a degree, or similar broad topics, Zakta shines by beating the thousands of irrelevant links you get in Google or Bing.

The How Zakta Can Help page details the different benefits of Zakta for teachers, students, travelers, entrepreneurs, bloggers, etc. You can use Zakta as a casual surfer, but to get access to all the features, you need to register.

Ready? Let’s take Zakta for a spin and explore its features.

Organized Search Results

A search for “swine flu” quickly led me to choose the “2009 flu pandemic” organized set of results discarding the “1976 swine flu outbreak”. The search results are organized into sections, listed on the left. In this case, we see Reference, Web Sites, Books and Articles, etc. for swine flu. Observe that we also see sections of Symptoms, Prevention, and Treatment, as if Zakta “knows” that this is a medical condition.

Zakta “knows” about 3 million such informational topics already, so you will find sections meaningful to your search for every search term.

Personalized Search: Editing Results

There are many useful things you can do with the search results. Roll over your mouse over any result to get a mini-toolbar of actions you can perform on that result.

Delete results you don’t want to see again, use drag and drop to reorder results, and annotate or recommend a result. The personal ClipPad is your clipboard that remembers clipped results across related searches.

Share your results as a Guide

You can share your personalized results to create and publish a Zakta Guide. You can choose the sections to include, apply predefined templates, and include related searches as you wish. Once you create a guide, you can easily link to it, share it over email or on any social network. Your guide is shown to other Zakta users, who can recommend it. You can also invite your trusted friends or colleagues to collaborate on a Guide. Finally, a widget lets you embed your guide on your website or blog. You can also create a guide from scratch using the Guide Creator.

While Zakta is still in Beta, hundreds of Guides have already been developed by its users. From the Guides page, you can see popular guides, recently updated guides, or browse through them by subject, title, etc. Published Guides are even accessible from within Facebook with the Zakta Guides for Facebook app.

Zakta Tools: Search Packs and Firefox Plugin

The Zakta Firefox plugin allows you to clip anything from any web page directly to your Zakta ClipPad or Guide. Zakta SearchPacks give you access to a plethora of web search engines in tabs for different types of searches. SearchPacks are available for Web, News, Blogs, Discussions, Images, Videos and Health. For example, the Web SearchPack gives you access to Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, etc.

There are social networking search features built into Zakta as well, if you wish to build a trusted network of friends and keep yourself up-to-date with new search results or guides in your areas of interest.

Will you try out Zakta? Do you find it better for researching topics? We would love to hear your feedback in the comments!

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If you are like me, you want to download and backup your Facebook data just in case. Here is a simple way to backup and archive your Facebook information using the ArchiveFacebook Firefox extension.

Archive Facebook is an experimental Firefox extension that allows you to backup Facebook data on your local hard drive. You can browse your archive as if it were your local copy of Facebook. Facebook does not let you upload this data in any way, so you cannot use it for restoring anything in case you delete your data or account in Facebook.

Archive Facebook backs up the following from your Facebook profile:

• Photos
• Messages
• Activity Stream
• Friends List
• Notes
• Events
• Groups
• Info

Note that your friends activity or data is not included in your archive. Also, if you prefer using a browser other than Firefox, you can use this extension by installing Firefox just to backup Facebook data, and then uninstall Firefox. Your backup will be usable from other browsers as well (see last section below).

Disable or Uninstall Scrapbook

Archive Facebook causes instability if the Scrapbook Firefox extension is installed. You should not run both of them simultaneously, so if you have installed Scrapbook, disable or uninstall it.

Get a Facebook Username

As of version 1.0, Archive Facebook works only if you have a vanity URL for your Facebook profile. If you don’t already have one, get a Facebook username for your account here. Once you can access your Facebook via http://www.facebook.com/your_name you are all set.

Install the Extension

To get started, install the Archive Facebook extension from the Mozilla Firefox Addons gallery. This is an experimental extension, so you will need to enable the option to allow you to download and install it.

After restarting Firefox, you should see a new menu item “ArchiveFB” in Firefox between the Bookmarks and the Tools menu.

Backup and Archive

Login to your Facebook account. You should be able to browse in Facebook before you start the archive process.

Go to ArchiveFB > Show in Sidebar and open the sidebar.

While you are seeing Facebook open in your browser, select ArchiveFB > Archive. You will automatically get redirected to your Facebook profile page and see the following dialog box:

Select OK to start the backup process. Cancel will not start any operation. Once you start the archive process, ArchiveFB begins to retrieve your Facebook stream in reverse chronological order. You will see a series of dialog boxes displaying how far back it has progressed in the retrieval process.

If you select Cancel on any of these dialog boxes, your archive will extend back in time only till that date and time stamp.

Once the retrieval process is complete, ArchiveFB will start downloading your Facebook data to create your backup archive.

The process may take several hours depending upon the speed of your connection and how long and extensively you’ve used Facebook.

Be patient, but if you find that the process is stuck on one particular item in the list, click Pause and then Start to resume. I found that this trick worked when ArchiveFB seemed to get stuck on a few items in the list.

Once the backup and archive operation is complete, you can see a new entry in the sidebar “Facebook | username date” with your username and the current date. This indicates that the operation was successful.

Browsing Your Archive

Just like any data backup software, you can have multiple sets of your Facebook archive made at different points in time, which will all appear in your ArchiveFB sidebar. Clicking on any of the entries in the sidebar browses that archive set, starting at your profile page.

Observe the browser address bar URLs when browsing your Facebook profile archive. It will show “file://” instead of “http://” indicating that you are browsing a local copy on your hard disk. You should be able to view your photos, friends list, notes, etc. from within your local copy.

You will see an Annotation Bar at the bottom of the browser. It has highlighting and annotation tools with which you can make notes about any of the items in your Facebook archive.

For Advanced Users and Other Browsers

ArchiveFB stores the copy of your Facebook data within your Firefox profile by default. You will find an ArchiveFB folder created inside your Firefox profile folder, where the archives created by this extension are stored.

What if you normally use a different browser? In the ArchiveFB sidebar, go to Tools > Options. In the Options dialog, go to the Organize tab. In the Location to Store Data, you can specify a different location for your archive.

From any archive set, you can open the “index.html” file to open and browse your Facebook archive data from within any browser.

Before you run off to backup your Facebook data, you might also want to check out our popular Facebook Hack Codes and Privacy Tips!

Were you able to backup your Facebook data? Feel free to share your experience in the comments!

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Of course, that is just one scenario where screencasts are useful. Some other popular examples where screencasts are used include:

• Showing off your skills at using Photoshop or some other complex app
• Creating “How To” videos for use in your blog posts
• Creating e-Learning tutorials

How to Create Screencasts With Screenr

Screenr makes creating and sharing screencasts very simple. You need to have the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed on your system and the Java plugin enabled in your browser, but Screenr itself is a web app so you don’t need to install it. Screenr will prompt you to automatically install Java if you don’t have it, hence there is no need to install it separately beforehand.

Screenr works on both PCs and Macs. Screencasts are created in high-definition Flash format so they can be played everywhere on the web, including on iPhones. You can also use your microphone to record your voice during the screencast. Screenr is used exclusively with Twitter and all screencasts are public. For other options, you should check out 5 Free Screencasting Apps for Creating Video Tutorials.

Create Your Screencast

For the sake of this article, let’s say I want to create a screencast of a walkthrough of the new Microsoft Security Essentials anti-virus software.

Go to Screenr and login directly with Twitter using OAuth. Clicking the Record your screencast now! button loads the recorder. You can record screencasts of up to 5 minutes length.

In the recorder, you can select the audio option for your screencast. For our example, I minimized the browser window, and loaded the Security Essentials window. I then resized the recorder window to fit the Security Essentials window. This optimizes the screencast for clarity as well as download size.

After clicking the red Record button, I viewed all the tabs in the Security Essentials app, as if I were performing a walkthrough. All my actions are automatically recorded. When I was finished, I clicked Done.

Publish and Share Your Screencast

When you are finished, you are automatically taken to the Screenr website, where you can preview, describe, publish, and share your screencast. You have the option of tweeting your screencast automatically or do it separately. Once you publish, you can see Screenr making web and iPhone versions of your screencast and uploading them.

The Share section on the right lets you embed your screencast on a blog, upload it to YouTube, download an mp4 version, or delete it from your profile. Here is the sample screencast I created using Screenr:

When you share screencasts on Twitter via Screenr, users who view your screencast can share and comment on them. They can ReTweet your screencast to share it with others, and their comments are sent to you as Twitter @Replies.

Will you use Screenr for your screencasting needs? Did you find it easy to use? Tell us in the comments!

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The Unique People Focus

While handling all your email and social networking communication from one place is a no-brainer, there is a tremendous benefit of using Threadsy that is not readily apparent before you use it. Imagine you’re responding to a friend or colleague’s email discussing a specific topic. With your regular webmail, you will simply respond to the topic being discussed in the email, right?

Now, in Threadsy, while you are replying to her via email, you see her Facebook status or recent tweet – “Just got tickets for the U2 concert!” – and you just might add something to your email. Threadsy makes this possible via the automatic Profile View, which you shall see below. In this way, Threadsy lets you focus on people, not the medium of communication you or they might prefer. You don’t miss a person’s recent status updates just because you don’t use Facebook or Twitter often enough.

The Integrated View

Threadsy keeps it simple by showing all your email and social networking communication in two columns or streams. The Inbound column has messages specifically addressed to you. This includes Email, Twitter @replies and Direct Messages, and your Facebook Inbox. The Unbound column shows feeds that you follow, such as your Twitter stream and Facebook friends’ status updates. You can adjust the width of the Unbound column using the arrow sliders in between the two panes.

Note that Threadsy is not a Personal Information Manager. If you want calendar, notes, RSS feeds, etc. all in one place, check out Life.io. Threadsy focuses on communication and excels by keeping it simple. At present, you need to add a webmail account to use Threadsy, so for example, you can’t use it with just your Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Adding Accounts

Adding your email and social networking accounts is as easy as pie, but you do need to provide your login credentials to Threadsy. Twitter OAuth is coming soon and you can use Facebook connect after you have logged in. For webmail accounts, Threadsy supports AOL, Gmail (and Google Apps), Hotmail and Yahoo! US.

Inbound: What’s Sent To You

The Inbound column shows all your messages in a chronological sequence, whether they are email, Twitter replies, or Facebook messages. Icons at the right of each message help you quickly identify the type of message. You can quickly filter messages by type using the tabs at the top for your webmail, Facebook, and Twitter.

Simply hovering your mouse over a message without actually opening it gives you options to quickly reply, retweet, delete, favorite or archive it. Click an email or Facebook message to open and read it.

Unbound: What You’re Following

The Unbound column displays your Twitter and Facebook feeds also in chronological sequence. You can filter the stream using the Facebook or Twitter tabs at the top. You can post your own Facebook status updates or Twitter tweets from within the box at the top.

The Chat tab in the Unbound column allows you to use Instant Messaging with your IM contacts.

Twitter Stream

The Twitter stream in the Unbound column shows pictures and videos inline. This allows you to play videos without leaving Threadsy.

Hovering your mouse over a tweet brings up quick Reply, ReTweet, and Favorite buttons.

Facebook Feed

Like many desktop clients, Threadsy has inbuilt support for interacting with your Facebook stream – without installing anything. You can like items, view comments and enter your own comments.

View Profiles Automatically

Whenever you click on a tweet or view an email message, Threadsy shows you a profile snapshot of the person in the right Unbound column. I found it a quick and easy way to connect with people on other networks. For example, here is a profile view of Kristen, one of our new writers at MakeUseOf:

Threadsy collects information from dozens of sites; and shows you a bio, recent photos, and recent status updates on Facebook and Twitter. This is incredibly useful as it provides the context for you to respond appropriately to the person. You can directly jump to the person’s profile on any of the listed networks to connect.

Want to start using Threadsy right away? Click this link to get an instant invite, exclusively for MakeUseOf readers. Don’t forget to give us your feedback in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 3 Easy Steps to Lifestream with StoryTlr (3)
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It is a cool new “Relationship Manager” that recently launched publicly in beta. Gist is not for casual users, rather, it’s a one-of-its-kind service for professional users that bridges key gaps between other popular services. For personal use, you should checkout Life.IO.

What is Gist?

Gist aims to help you control information overload by focusing on people and companies that are important to you. First, Gist gets information from your inbox and social networking accounts to build a database of your network. It then monitors the web for information about the people and companies in your network. Using the concept of “importance”, it then provides customizable views of people and companies, showing you news, blog posts, tweets, etc. for each of them. Your Dashboard becomes a “intelligent reader” thus giving you insight into critical updates that are important to you.

Get Started By Connecting Accounts

Gist allows you to connect a variety of sources using built-in business networking techniques to build your network database. At present, you can integrate your email from Outlook, Gmail or any service that supports IMAP. Your professional contacts can come from LinkedIn, Salesforce, or any CSV file. Note that Gist doesn’t connect with LinkedIn at present, hence you need to export and import your LinkedIn contacts.

Social networking contacts can be imported from Facebook and Twitter. Gist also offers an Outlook plug-in so that you can use it from within Outlook. To use Gist effectively, you will need to personalize it as described later in this article, but first let’s look at the powerful views Gist offers.

Dashboard View

The Dashboard is your top-level view to get all the news about your network. It is a RSS news feed reader, Twitter client, and Calendar rolled into one, with optional widgets showing shared links and attachments received in your email inbox.

You can customize the Dashboard to show Recent News, or news from people you’ve recently contacted or added. Information displayed can be filtered by date, content source, importance and tags. You can search to quickly find people, companies, attachments, or shared links.

You can also share any information item from your Dashboard to Facebook or Twitter. In this way, Gist goes beyond an “intelligent reader” to being a “intelligent networking” tool.

People and Companies View

The People and Companies tabs organize your contacts according to importance. It shows your email history and stats, the last time you were in contact, number of contacts from a company, and so on, for each person and company in your network.

You can search to find and manage contacts, or add new contacts manually. You can sort the view using any of the column headers, and use tags to filter the view. For each person or company, you can edit their names, add tags, and adjust their importance. You can merge duplicates, and use multi-select to perform bulk operations. Finally, you can instruct Gist whether to Watch a person or contact for news updates.

Profile View

Gist Profile pages are a central place to find out everything about the people and companies in your network. Gist scans your email accounts, calendars, contact databases such as LinkedIn, and social networks like Facebook and Twitter, to create unified profiles for each person or company. Gist is continuously searching for new information about your contacts even when you’re not using it.

The What’s New section pulls blog posts, tweets, and news from thousands of sources with sharing and filtering tools. You can flag items, mark them as read, share items via email, Facebook, or Twitter, or dismiss them as not relevant. The right-hand side shows searchable widgets such as aggregated conversations, shared links and attachments. Shared Contacts shows related people with links to their profiles. There is even a Google Search widget pre-populated with search results that can be customized with your own search term.

Profile information can be manually edited and updated. If the Gist profile doesn’t have it already, you can add a relevant image, website, phone number, address, and tags. The best way to organize your contacts is to use tags. Finally, a cool Dossier feature provides a printable version of a profile that you can use before meeting or communicating with a person.

Optimize To Get The Most Out Of Gist

After initially building your Gist contacts network, I recommend that you spend some time tweaking it for your needs. I found this necessary because:

• Gist may not recognize that the person from your LinkedIn network and your friend on Facebook are the same person. In these cases, you will need to Merge them.
• Similarly, Gist may not correctly associate Twitter handles with the contacts from your email inbox.
• Gmail has a rather unconventional approach of adding every email address you send email to, as a contact. To my dismay, this doesn’t work well with Gist, which imports all Gmail contacts. I ended up deleting tons of frivolous help@…, support@…, and info@… kind of “contacts”.
• You may not have had much interaction with influential people who are actually important to you. It appears that Gist’s ranking uses frequency of communication as a benchmark to assess importance, because of which you may need to manually adjust their importance.
• If your Facebook friends are primarily personal friends who work at companies that don’t really matter to you, you will need to either delete or lower their importance in Gist.
• Also, profiles may need to be edited to add individual websites, blog feeds and news sources so that you get relevant information.

Are you excited about Gist using as an intelligent networking tool? Did you like the post? Tell us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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There are several reasons why this may be a preferred way to use Twitter:

• Running a separate Twitter desktop client application (usually with Adobe AIR) takes up additional system resources, which can slowdown your system.
• Integrate Twitter smoothly in your workflow, since you don’t need to switch between the browser and an application.
• You don’t need to download anything and are always using the latest version automatically.
• If you wish, you can switch between different web apps easily and swiftly.
• Web apps provide some special features not available in common desktop apps.

Which web-based apps should you use? What are their unique features when compared to the common Twitter desktop clients? In this article, we will look at four Twitter web apps and highlight their unique features so that you can choose the right one to make use of.

HootSuite

HootSuite is an easy-to-use but powerful Twitter application. The interface is very flexible and you can create nice layouts just the way you want them. You can have multiple tabs, with each tab showing up to four columns of tweets. You can drag and drop columns and tabs, change width of columns, and set individual refresh intervals for each tab. Columns can be used for Groups, Mentions, DMs, and Searches just like other apps.

The unique features of HootSuite are:

• Co-workers can tweet from the same Twitter account
• You can track the number of clicks on the links you tweet
• You can schedule tweets for later
• You can feed any RSS/Atom feed to your Twitter account
• You can use Ping.fm with HootSuite to broadcast tweets to other networks
• The Hootlet is a bookmarklet for your browser toolbar to tweet about a web page

Brizzly

Brizzly is the newest web app for Twitter, at present in beta for which you can quickly get an invite just by signing up. It is extremely easy to use, has an uncluttered, clean look, and you will find yourself tweeting within minutes. You can use up to 5 Twitter accounts and create up to 5 groups.

Brizzly’s claim to fame is for the following:

• Inline view of pictures, maps, and videos from a variety of sources
• Save drafts of Tweets like just like email drafts
• Temporarily “mute” prolific tweeters to hide their updates in your stream
• Easily view or edit explanations of Twitter’s trending topics
• Keyboard shortcuts for power users
• Upload pictures directly via Brizzly and track their number of clicks

TwitHive

TwitHive is a different breed among these Twitter web apps. TwitHive uses the term “channels” to describe what essentially become columns once you create them. You can have a highly customized Twitter client because of the flexibility you have in defining channels.

A channel, or column, can be made up of Tweets, Groups, DMs, and Search. The Tweets column can additionally be filtered to display Conversations (tweets with an @reply), Questions, ReTweets, Links, or Keywords. In the example above, I have 3 columns set to display ReTweets, Tweets with Links, and a Search column for Facebook. Also, it is easy to track keyword or brand mentions with TwitHive.

Seesmic Web

Seesmic Desktop’s web-based cousin is not as powerful, but has a few nifty features you won’t find in its desktop version. It is easy to use and offers a choice of two different color schemes. At present, it does not support multiple Twitter accounts and does not allow you to create groups. While these features are just around the corner, Seesmic Web is an attractive option if you are following a limited number of people from a single account.

Seesmic Web has the following standout features:

• Gmail-like interface that lets you view large number of tweets instantly
• Inline previews of pictures, maps, and videos on mouseover
• Threaded DM conversation view (as shown below)
• Support for French, German, Chinese and Romanian languages

Did you find the post useful? Did we miss your favorite Twitter web-app? Tell us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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In this article, let us look at 4 Visual Search Engines that provide a unique and enjoyable search experience.

Bing Visual Search Engine

Bing has introduced a new approach to its visual search by letting you browse topic-specific galleries and narrow the field of your search by selecting filters.

In this approach, you do not need to type anything to start searching. To use the Bing Visual Search Engine, you should have installed Silverlight and set your country to US. From the home page, you can see a set of featured galleries, or choose from different categories like Entertainment, Famous People, Reference, Shopping and Sports.

When you select a gallery, you get an eye-popping display of choices, which you can filter using categories on the left. For example, if I choose Popular Books, I get a nice array of books like in a real bookstore. I can sort books by Title, Author, Sales, or even Length. On the left, I can narrow the results by choosing a sub-category or filter. In this case, subcategories for books are Newest, or the Top pre-order/fiction/non-fiction/paperback lists.

I can also use filters to narrow the results for what I might find suitable for my taste: the subject, author, format (hardcover, etc.), and length in pages. Some of the galleries, like the top iPhone apps gallery for example, are especially useful and offer a unique experience. Once you use it for a while, you might think that this new feature distinguishes Bing from Google to a limited extent, as a decision-making engine.

Spezify

After using Spezify, I felt we do injustice to the web by using an exclusive textual interface to search the rich multimedia of the web. Spezify works like a generic search engine, except that the results are a visual collage of media drawn from different kinds of media sources – textual links from web pages, informative links from Wikipedia, pictures from across the web, tweets with the search term, videos from YouTube, books from Amazon, and so on. You need Flash to use Spezify.

You can browse through the results matrix in both vertical and horizontal directions, and look at the pictures as well as the videos from within the search results page. The links within the tweets will take you directly to the page about that topic. Articles from the web are displayed along with the number of Diggs, which show that Spezify uses Digg to show you popular content. Terms related to the topic are displayed at the top if you wish to explore or narrow your search.

Viewzi

Viewzi, which runs using Flash, is the most customizable and multi-faceted visual search engine. For any search term, it offers up to 19 different ways to view the search results, and you can make any one of them your default. The types of views cover everything under the sun – web screenshots, simple text, photos, music, news, celebrity gossip, recipes, weather, etc.

Videos are fetched from Joost, YouTube, and Viddler, but cannot be played back within the results page. However, the best view is the photo tag view, in which you can explore Flickr photos of related tags just by clicking on them. You can drag the tags around whichever way you want, and the interface is quite remarkable.

Spacetime

We had covered SpaceTime on MakeUseOf back when it was a 3D browser. SpaceTime is now a visual search engine using Flash, which shows search results in cover-flow style. You can choose results from Google or Wikipedia, or search Images, or videos from YouTube. Again, the videos can’t be played back within the search results, however the image search does look very pretty.

While you may not use these visual search engines for routine search queries, they do offer an attractive, unique experience. They can be a great way to introduce children to the richness of the web, or to encourage their curiosity in a certain topic. Even for us, they are a refreshing way to explore the web in a different way.

Last year, we also profiled TinEye which is another possibility – but this one is termed by the site as “reverse search“.   You upload an image to them and they will search for similarities.

Are there any of your other favorite visual search engines we missed? Do tell us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Why Lifestream?

There are different incentives for lifestreaming:

• Most people use lifestreaming to present a unified view of their online activities to their friends. Those who subscribe or view your lifestream do not need to visit different websites to see your pictures, writing, videos, etc. Your lifestream is your “Centralized Me” on the web.
• Lifestreaming is also a way to permanently backup your online data. Your tweets get archived automatically. Your photos get backed up, just in case. Your blog posts get backed up, in case your blog is hacked.
• Lifestreaming can be a way to maintain an active blog when you don’t always have time to write blog posts.
• Create “stories” about an event. Let’s say you went on a weekend trip during which you tweeted, uploaded a few photos to Flickr, and a video to YouTube. Your trip can be easily shared as a “story” without searching for the content on different sites.
• Some people use lifestreaming for personal recollection and memories. What did you do on the web on your last birthday or anniversary? Your lifestream will show it to you.

How do you start lifestreaming? Let’s find out.

#1: Add Sources for your Lifestream

After you sign up and verify your email address, set your time zone. You can then choose the sources to add to your lifestream. There are 16 sources supported, from Facebook, RSS Blog Feeds and Flickr/Picasa photos to Twitter, Last.fm/YouTube, and social bookmarking sites like SumbleUpon/Digg/Delicious.

You do not need to supply any passwords because StoryTlr will simply pick up what is already publicly available via your profile on the various services. With Twitter, you can hide your @replies so that conversational tweets don’t clutter your lifestream. Once StoryTlr has collected all your information you are ready to personalize your lifestream.

#2: Select a Theme

On the Configure > Design tab, you can choose a theme just like you do for a blog. There are 8 pre-built themes ready to be used.

You can also choose a custom background and header image.

#3: Select Pages

StoryTlr creates a full lifestream view, but also lets you create custom pages with filtered sources and more. Go to Configure > Pages, and choose the number and type of pages you would like on your site. A Dashboard page provides an overview of recent activities, while photo/video pages provide a gallery with slideshow.

You can drag and drop to change the order of the pages as you like. At any time, use the View tab to see how your website looks.

Your lifestream is ready! Use the View tab to see your lifestream. You can change your theme and tweak your pages any time you want. Your StoryTlr website is also like a blog – you can update your status Facebook style, write a blog post Blogger/Wordpress style and get comments on your posts.

For more advanced customization, see the next steps. All the following steps are optional.

#4: Customize Avatar and Widgets

It’s a good idea to display your own avatar and introduce yourself with a bio. Go to Configure > Profile to do this.

In the Configure > Widgets section, you can select which widgets to display in your sidebar. If you have setup your avatar, choose the Avatar and Profile widget.

#5: Create Stories

You can automatically “pluck out” a certain time period of your lifestream to create a story. This works best when you make a trip, attend a conference, go on vacation or attend an event like a wedding. On the StoryTell page, choose the time period and select the sources to build your story.

Some interesting events have been captured as stories in StoryTlr, like for example, the Hudson river plane crash story above.

#6: Advanced Customization

If you are geeky enough, there is more you can do with StoryTlr:

• Use your own domain (or subdomain) for your lifestream
• Setup Disqus commenting on your StoryTlr site
• Create your own CSS to customize your site
• Automatically cross-post your lifestream to Twitter

What are you waiting for? Go to StoryTlr and start lifestreaming! Oh, and don’t forget to share your lifestream and stories with us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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There are several paid services online where you can find out details of somebody’s shady past. In most cases, so-called ‘”free” sites are simply marketing tricks to get you to pay for the information you really need. However, since everything at MakeUseOf is truly free, here is how you can perform a free criminal background check online without paying a dime. Note that this is valid only for US residents.

Criminal Searches

Criminal Searches allows you to:

• Search criminal records by first and last name, optionally filtered by US state
• Search criminals in a neighborhood
• Search sex offenders in a neighborhood
• Sign up to receive alerts on criminal records of up to 5 names
• Get criminal statistics based on types of crime, ethnicity, gender and age

Search by Name

Criminal search results are categorized into Behavioral, Business, Drug & Alcohol, Sex Related, Theft & Robbery, Violent, and Traffic/Other. Not surprisingly, you will notice that criminals like to change names and the site shows you all the different names associated with that person.

Clicking the View Details button will take you to a detailed page with the free criminal background info about a specific individual. Where available, you can see information that can help identify a person such as age, height, race, eye color, hair color, etc.

A list of all offenses is seen along with details of each offense such as date and place of conviction, the verdict and sentence.

Free Criminal Background Check by Neighborhood

When you search an address or a neighborhood area for criminals, you get a Google Map mashup with the locations and types of criminals in that area. You can use the usual Google Map controls to move, zoom in/out, etc. Click on any of the offenders to see brief details from where you can jump to the full details of that person. For example, here is a map of criminals in Trenton, NJ:

Sex Offender Search

The Sex Offender search works in similar fashion, showing you a Google Map with locations of registered sex offenders. A search in Los Angeles for example revealed 77 registered sex offenders. Detailed information on each offender is seen on the left, when you click any offender icon in the map.

Advanced Search

If you know more details of a specific person you suspect, you can use the Advanced Search that allows you to do a free criminal background check using middle name, address, age range, or even date of birth.

Criminal Statistics

The statistics section of the website with pretty pie charts is compelling for anyone with even a passing interest in crime studies. The crime category chart allows you to further dig into each type. For example, Theft and Robbery can be further segmented into Stolen Property, Burglary, Fraud, Larceny, and so on.

Suspect someone? Want to check how safe is your neighborhood? Go to Criminal Searches and find out.

Important: Please be careful to use this website as a starting point. Remember that free checks work only on publicly available information and may not always be comprehensive. If your safety is at stake, it is best to get paid professional services before placing your faith in someone.

Also note that harassing anyone on the offender registry database is a misdemeanor and can be punished both by a fine and jail time.

You can also check out previously profiled SpotCrime for crime reports in your neighborhood and Family Watchdog to get a map view of the National Sex Offender registry. Did you find Criminal Searches useful? Liked this post? Tell us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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This guide will show what you can (and cannot) do to safeguard your Facebook privacy.

1. Organize Friends in Lists

What do you do when your boss, mother-in-law, or a casual web acquaintance sends you a friend request on Facebook? Use Friend Lists. Friend Lists are the foundation of your Facebook privacy settings. Select Friends from the top menu, and use the Create link to create friend lists like Co-workers, Family, College Friends, etc. Your friends can’t see your lists, so you can name them whatever you like.

Tip: On your left sidebar, all your friend lists may not show up by default. Click More to see all of them, and drag and drop those you want above the separator.

2. Customize Profile Privacy

Click Settings > Privacy Settings > Profile. Select which parts of your profile will be seen by whom.

If you choose Customize in the drop down, you can be more specific. This is where the Friend Lists you created before become really useful.

Also go to the Contact Information tab and choose how you want your contact information to be shared on the Internet.

3. Set Facebook Privacy Level of Photo Albums

On the Photos tab of your profile page, click Album Privacy. Here again, you can use your Friend Lists to set the privacy for each photo album.

Note that your profile pictures go into a special album that is always visible to ALL your friends.

4. Restrict Search Visibility

Click Privacy > Search to set your visibility when someone searches Facebook for people. This is an important way to safeguard your Facebook privacy.  You can also select what will be visible in the search results.

5. Control Automatic Wall Posts and News Feed Updates

Your actions in Facebook such as comments, likes, appear as highlights on ALL your friends’ home pages. You cannot use friend lists here, only turn them on or off.

Go to Privacy > News Feed and Wall and choose whether you want your boss or ex-girlfriend to know that you’re in a relationship.

6. Set Facebook Wall Privacy

Go to your profile page, click Options > Settings under the status box.

Here you can control whether your friends can post to your Wall, and who can see the posts made by your friends.

7. Avoid Appearing in Advertisements

Facebook has two types of advertisements: third-party and Facebook. Third-party advertisements are currently not allowed to use your pictures, but there is a setting to disallow it if it is allowed in the future. Go to Privacy > News Feed and Wall > Facebook Ads tab to turn this off.

The Facebook ads shown to your friends are about ‘social actions’ like becoming a fan of something. You can turn this off at the bottom of the page.

8. Protect Yourself from Friends’ Applications

Go to Privacy > Applications, and click the Settings tab and uncheck all the boxes. These settings control what information about you is visible to applications installed by your friends. By default, these are set to visible. This means that your religious, sexual, and political preferences, pictures, etc. are readily available to one of the million worldwide Facebook application developers, each time any of your friends takes a quiz, plays a game, or runs any other Facebook app. This is obviously a Facebook privacy issue.

This is the most commonly misunderstood aspect of Facebook privacy. These settings control what applications installed by your friends can see about you, even if you don’t install the application yourself.

Why is this important? Because these settings will not change anything about what you are sharing with the applications you install yourself. For that, go to the next step.

9. Privacy from Your Applications

There is no way to control what applications see about you; it is an all-or-nothing affair. Take this quiz developed by the American Civil Liberties Union to check what anonymous application developers can know about you and your friends each time you take a quiz.

The Burton Group’s Identity Blog features the Facebook Privacy Mirror, an application that you can use to find out what applications know about you and your friends. If you really want to see exactly what profile data of each of your friends is visible to application developers, Privacy Mirror shows it in detail.

The only thing you can do is to authorize only those applications you require and trust. Go to Settings > Application Settings from the top menu. Change the drop-down from Recently Used to Authorized. Here you can see all the applications you have authorized to get access to ALL your profile information. Remove the ones you no longer need.

Also check the list of applications Allowed to Post and Granted Additional Permissions to remove unwanted ones.

10. Quitting Facebook? Delete, Don’t Just De-Activate Your Account

You can easily deactivate your account in Facebook from the Settings page. But deactivation will retain all your profile information within Facebook, including pictures, friends, etc. If you want to permanently delete your Facebook account, click here to submit a deletion request. Note that:

1. There is an unspecified delay between submitting your delete request and actual deletion.
2. If you login to Facebook, your deletion request is automatically cancelled.
3. There doesn’t seem to be any way to confirm that your request was completed.
4. Even after permanent deletion, Facebook says that copies of your photos may remain on their servers for technical reasons.

Also, note that once in a while, there is news of a Facebook hack or leak that can expose your information on the Internet. It is better to be safe than sorry by avoiding using Facebook for anything that may embarrass you.

I hope this article gives you a better understanding and insight into Facebook’s privacy. Have any questions or concerns? Liked the post? Please tell us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Flickroom is the new Adobe AIR kid on the block that will change the way you interact with Flickr.  Flickroom lets you browse Flickr in a beautiful charcoal colored interface that is soothing to the eyes, allows easy photo uploads and downloads, gives you real-time notifications for comments and faves on your photostream, and more. The app is still in beta and new features are being added at a rapid pace.

Flickroom Setup

Download and install Flickroom from here. When launched, it will allow you to connect with your Flickr account or create a new one. The application requires a simple one-time authorization process via Flickr so that it can work with your account. Your credentials are cached locally so you don’t need to login again in the future.

Browse Flickr with Flickroom

Users of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom will feel right at home since the interface to browse Flickr is very similar. The bottom filmstrip shows your (or your contact’s) photographs. The center area is where you view photos, edit photo data, and chat with other Flickroom users.

You can choose the display size and background color of the photo viewer, and click Details to view photo information like description, comments, tags, and EXIF data.

At the top right, you can navigate between your photostream, contacts, groups, etc. The application commands are in a toolbar at the top-right of the window. From here, you can view the latest photos from your contacts, upload, chat, search and set default settings. Hover your mouse for a popup description since it may get some time to get used to the command buttons.

Viewing recent uploads from your contacts is very easy. You can see the recent photos in the right sidebar or launch a separate filmstrip view. In this separate window, you can flip between your contacts to see their recent uploads in a filmstrip.

Upload Photos

There are three ways to upload photos using Flickroom:

• When your photostream is visible, drag and drop any photo into the app to add it to your photostream.
• When viewing one of your sets, drag and drop any photo to add it to the set.
• For powerful upload functions, use the Upload Manager accessed from the top-right toolbar.

I was very impressed with the simple yet powerful Upload Manager. You can select a batch of multiple photos, choose privacy settings, use tags and existing sets, create new sets, and add to groups, before the actual upload.

Download Photos

At present, you can download only one photo that is selected and displayed. For batch downloading, do checkout the two different apps we have previously covered on MakeUseOf.

Edit Photos, Add Comments and Notes

For any photo you are viewing, the action buttons below the photo on the right allow you to edit information, make comments, add notes, mark as favorite and so on.

Search Users and Photos

Flickroom allows basic searching for photos and users at present. You can search for users by email address or username. The photo search searches tags to find matches. Though the search is basic, the best part is that you can add users as your contact from within the application.

Preferences

The application preferences allow you to set the default photo size (useful for slower connections to use smaller display size), background color, initial view, and a ‘signature’ for all new photos.

Live Feed, Chat and Tweeting

The most unique feature of this app is the ability to get real-time notifications for any activity such as comments and favorites on your photostream. You can tweet about a photo from right within the application.

If you’re in a social mood, you can jump right into the Chat room, where you can chat with other Flickroom users currently logged in.

Do you like Flickroom’s interface to browse Flickr? Does it make your photos come alive? Let us know in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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We have covered Feedly before here on MakeUseOf. Since then, it has improved and kept up with the new features introduced in Google Reader as well. Feedly works only with Firefox at present, but an experimental version for Safari is already out and support for Chrome is round the corner. Want to see what other users are saying? See the feedback from users on Twitter!

Organize with the Dashboard

You should use the Dashboard to organize your feeds to get the best experience. From the Dashboard, you can:

• Create and rename categories
• Drag and drop to move and organize feeds in categories
• Identify and delete feeds you haven’t read in a long time
• Mark your favorites so they come up on top in the different views

Note that categories in Feedly map to folders in Google Reader, so any changes in Feedly will be reflected back in Google Reader automatically.

Start with the Cover Page or Digest

The Cover and Digest views are the most popular start pages, both offering different layouts of the following:

• Featured articles from your favorite feeds at the top
• Selected list of unread articles from all feeds
• Your latest Twitter stream, Twitter mentions, and Karma (more below)
• A view of your Friends, Twitter trending topics, etc.

Categories with unread articles appear on the left navigation bar, which also contains in-built views like Latest, Friends, and Comments.

Read and Share Articles

When you read an article in Feedly, you can easily email it, and share it on several social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, etc. The experience is much smoother than sharing in Google Reader.

Feedly also shows you the number of times that article has been Tweeted, shared on FriendFeed, number of Diggs, and comments on the original post.

Discuss in the Comments View

If you follow a large number of people in Google Reader, viewing the shared items feed can get unwieldy. Feedly makes it simpler as you can mark your favorite friends so that their shares are featured prominently in Feedly. Using Feedly’s preferences, you can set favorite sources to be featured in the Cover and Digest views. Use the Friends view to read their shared articles, and use the Comments view to engage in the discussion surrounding them.

See Your Karma

This is the most unique and exciting feature I am sure you will love. How do you know who is reading the articles you share on Twitter? How many times do people click on the links in your Tweets? The Karma view attempts to provide this insight, which can be invaluable feedback towards learning more about your Twitter network.

Feedly Mini: Power at your Fingertips

Feedly Mini shows up at the bottom of your browser window when you’re browsing the web, even when you have not opened Feedly. It combines the power of multiple bookmarklets in your browser toolbar and doesn’t waste precious toolbar real estate.

As you can see in the above screenshot, using Feedly Mini, you can Email, Tweet, Share and Star in Google Reader/Feedly any article on the web, even if you are not subscribed to that page’s feed. It is incredibly powerful compared to the Google Reader bookmarklet.

Will you use Feedly instead of Google Reader to read your feeds? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!

Icon by: FastIcon.com

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New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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What Is Your Twitter Reputation?

Can your reputation be measured? Yes, there are many services that claim to do that using different methods. You can check your reputation on free Twitter tools like Twitterank, Twitter Grader, Twitterholic, Twinfluence, Twitalyzer, and Klout. There is no single model that defines Twitter reputation, and this guide tries to combine all the different approaches used by such tools and suggested by experts.

Your Twitter reputation is important because:

• It may well be the first impression you make on the social web.
• Everything on Twitter is public (assuming you don’t protect your updates, which is 90% of Twitterers). This means your colleagues, current employer or potential recruiter can always see your Twitter profile and your tweets.
• Reputation will play an increasingly important role in search rankings. Already, third-party Twitter search engines like Topsy and Tweefind incorporate ranking in their search results, and Twitter itself is also on the way to ranking search results.

Convinced? Let’s get started.

1. Your Profile

Use your real name, a (decent) profile picture, a meaningful bio, and a link to your website, blog, or social profile. If you have a custom background on your profile page, people are more likely to follow you back.

2. Follow Authentic People

Don’t engage in any “get hundreds of followers quickly” schemes. Follow people you’re already friends with on other social networks. Then grow your Twitterverse as you get comfortable. Use our previously covered 9 sites and 4 ways to find Twitter friends based on geography and common interests.

I use the free Twitter tool Topify to get informative emails when someone follows me. It shows useful information like level of engagement, percentage of tweets containing links, and recent tweets to help decide whether to follow back.

3. Manage Your Followers and Friends

The days of “higher the number of followers, higher your reputation” are becoming a thing of the past, thanks to paid services that allow buying followers. Think of your reputation if there were half-naked women showing up as your followers!

Block suspicious accounts, spammers and bots from following you. I have recently started using Tweet Blocker to filter and clean my followers list and it works like a charm. Another service I find indispensable is Twerp Scan, which shows me a list of my contacts along with details of their number of follows, followers, ratio, etc. You can easily sort the list to weed out nasty spammers and indecent folks right within the app.

4. Get ReTweeted

The best way to increase your reach and influence on Twitter is to get retweeted. Statistical studies of retweets have found that links, quotes, trending topics, breaking news, questions, and creative/novel tweets are more likely to get retweeted. Shrink your tweet and reduce its length to around 100-110 characters so that it becomes easier for others to retweet without editing.

5. Mix Your Tweet Types

Do not restrict yourself to tweeting out informative links or indulging in pointless babble. Use a mix of tweets that are status updates, links, retweets, questions, and self-promotions for your blog posts.

6. Spread Your Tweets Over the Day

Services such as Tweet Stats let you see how your tweets are distributed through the day. Don’t send out a large number of tweets in short time spans and then disappear. Distribute your tweeting activity evenly through the day, using planned “Twitter-breaks” from your work. If you are going to be offline for a considerable amount of time, let your followers know.

7. Be Responsive and Engage in Conversation

Tools like Topify and Mr. Tweet now show your level of engagement. This influences whether people using such tools will follow you back.

Reply to others’ tweets using @Replies. Answer all @Replies and Direct Messages sent to you. Let people see that you don’t use Twitter simply to promote your links. Try to answer people’s questions and if you can’t, be a helping hand by retweeting them.

8. Don’t Misuse Hashtags

A UK furniture firm suffered a huge blow to their reputation on Twitter as they sent out marketing messages using #hashtags that were meant for completely unrelated topics. The Twitter community uses #hashtags for tracking specific topics they are interested in, so stick to conventions.

9. Avoid Many Twitter IDs from a Single IP Address

Some experts have proposed that multiple Twitter IDs created from the same IP address should have a lower Twitter rank in searches. This is a counter measure against spammers and bots who abuse Twitter accounts. If for whatever reason, you need to create a large number of legitimate Twitter accounts, don’t do it from the same computer.

10. Use DMs with Discretion

If I get automated DMs after I follow someone, I unfollow them. The same with people who play mafia-style Twitter games and send me invites to play via DMs.

Do not send Direct Messages to people you’ve recently started being friends with on Twitter. Most people consider DMs to be private messages that they share only with good friends. Use @Replies wherever possible, unless you want to discuss a sensitive issue that warrants a DM.

11 Use Recommendations

Recommendations are a great way to discover and be discovered. The most popular method on Twitter is the #FollowFriday hash tag. Like everything else in social media, the more you give, the more you get, so if you like this method, use it to give recommendations to others.

A better recommendation engine is Mr. Tweet, which is getting popular. It gives me decent recommendations since I joined, along with useful statistics.

12. Monitor Your Brand

If you own a brand name, create a search to monitor for all mentions of your brand. Most popular Twitter clients let you create saved searches, some like Seesmic Web even let you sync your saved searches with those on Twitter’s website.

Will these techniques help you enhance your Twitter reputation? Have any other suggestions? Do let us know in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Guess what – the new Seadragon does just that! You can share any large image you find on the web with this amazing new service from Microsoft Live Labs. Of course, everything featured here on MakeUseOf is free, but there’s more – there is no need to sign up anywhere. Just go to Seadragon and enter the URL of your image. It processes your image link and gives you URL that you can tweet, share on Facebook, or bookmark on Delicious, or whatever you wish. Let’s see how it works.

Suppose I wanted to share this wonderful panoramic high resolution photo of New York’s Grand Central Station by David Iliff, which is graciously shared on Wikimedia Commons:

You can see there is no fun sharing the photo in this way. The high resolution photo from Wikimedia Commons is 2500 x 1287 pixels, 1.13 MB in size. Here’s what you do to get your kicks by sharing the original image:

1. Copy the URL of the full-resolution image.
2. Go to Seadragon and paste the URL. Seadragon gives you a URL and an embed script code.
3. Share the URL with anyone or embed the script code on your blog.

That’s it! Here is how it looks:

You can use the embed script on your web page, blog, or eBay ad. If you are an artist, you can use it to create your own portfolio. Your viewers can view the high resolution image using any popular web browser on multiple platforms.

Notice how the image loads up very quickly even if it’s large in size. No more waiting for slow downloads for large images. If your viewers have Silverlight installed, the viewing experience is ultra-smooth and fast. But the beauty of this technology is that even if they don’t have it installed, it almost works the same way!

For iPhone lovers, Seadragon Mobile is available on the iPhone App Store. Using this free app, you can view large, high-resolution images on your iPhone.

You can create your own interesting images by creating your own panoramic photos, or stunning mosaics. Check out these 10 stunning photo blogs, download free high-resolution photos from this Digital Stock Photography Site, or check out the best sites to download very high resolution wallpapers.

Share your favorite high resolution images via Seadragon with us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How To Remove MetaData From Photos (Windows) (20)
• Backup And Download Flickr Photos in Bulk (Windows) (11)
• 5 Ways To Get Your Images Noticed In Flickr (7)
• [Google Picasa 101] – Saving, Exporting & Uploading To Picasa Web Albums (4)
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Quit Firefox, run “firefox.exe –profilemanager”, and create a new profile to experiment on. Use the new profile as your default only if your performance improves. Only those changes needed from a default installation are mentioned in this guide.

1. Use an Optimized Build of Firefox

If you’re using Windows, use an optimized build of Firefox 3.5.1 for your processor. Use Swiftfox for Linux.

2. Use Blank Homepage, Default Theme, Minimal Extensions

Set your homepage to about:blank. Use only must-have extensions with the default theme. Use Adblock Plus and Flashblock to block unwanted ads and Flash.

3. Optimize Download Options

In Options->Main, choose a folder for your downloads and save all downloads to it automatically. Close the download window automatically when all downloads are finished. Turn off download history in Options->Privacy, Custom settings for history.

4. Customize Content Type Handling

In Options->Applications, modify the following Content Types:

• Set archive files like .zip, .rar, etc. to Save File. Use your favorite archive program separately to open them.
• Set PDF files to Save File. Use your favorite PDF reader to separately open them.
• Set mailto to use your favorite desktop email client or Gmail/Yahoo webmail account. Sorry, Windows Live/AOL Mail users!
• Change Web Feed from Preview in Firefox to your favorite RSS reader.

In general, open files separately, rather than from within the browser wherever possible.

5. Increase Cache, Reduce History Size

In Options->Advanced->Network, increase Offline Storage (size of the disk cache) to 150 MB.

In Options->Privacy, use Custom settings for history, and reduce length of remembered history to 15 days.

6. Customize General Advanced Options

In Options->Advanced->General->Accessibility:

• Check Search for text when I start typing
• Uncheck Use smooth scrolling
• Turn off spell checker if you ROTFLMAO on forums and don’t aspire to be a writer. Keep it on if you’re looking for a job.
• Uncheck Always check to see if Firefox is the default browser on startup. On Windows, set Firefox as your default browser using Program Access and Defaults.

7. Remove Unused Search Engines

Drop-down In the search box, select Manage Search Engines…, and remove any search engines that you will never use.

8. Clean up bookmarks, avoid Live Bookmarks

If you have a lot of bookmarks in Firefox, you might have dead links, or even duplicate bookmarks. Clean them up using the CheckPlaces Firefox extension, and uninstall after you’re done.

Firefox checks Live Bookmarks every hour for updates. Use a dedicated RSS Reader like Google Reader instead. Delete the preset Latest Headlines Live Bookmark.

9. Performance Enhancing Extensions

If you prefer a nice GUI to tweak advanced settings, use these performance enhancing Firefox extensions. If you are the DIY type, these optimizations (and many more) are covered in the next sections.

• FasterFox 3.8.1 Lite is an (experimental) add-on that lets you choose from four presets (or use a custom profile) to optimize Firefox.
• Tweak Network 1.3 allows you to choose from Default and Power profiles for tweaking network settings in Firefox.

Advanced About:Config Tweaks

The following two sections are advanced Firefox configuration changes that are simple to make. Enter about:config in the Firefox address bar in an empty tab. Click ‘I’ll be careful, I promise!’. You can use Firefox’s Safe Mode and select ‘Reset all user preferences to Firefox defaults’ to undo any changes you make. Also, entries you change are displayed in bold, and can be reset using the right-click context-menu.

If an entry does not exist, create it by right-clicking on an empty space, selecting New, and choosing the type of entry as listed.

10. Advanced Browser Settings

You can use these recommended values or tweak them as per your system, preference, and browsing habits.

• accessibility.typeaheadfind.enablesound [Boolean]: Change to False to avoid a sound alert if no match is found when you search for text.
• alerts.totalOpenTime [Integer]: Reduce time to show Download Complete alerts to 2000 (2 seconds).
• browser.bookmarks.max_backups [Integer]: Reduce number of bookmark backups to speed up shutdown from 5 to 2.
• browser.cache.disk.parent_directory [String]: Move your Firefox cache to a disk or partition different from your Windows drive by specifying the folder path here.
• browser.download.manager.openDelay [Integer]: Don’t open Downloads window for very short downloads. Set to 2000 (2 second delay).
• browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo [Integer]: Reduce number of closed tabs you can undo from 10 to 4.
• browser.sessionstore.max_windows_undo [Integer]: Reduce number of closed windows you can undo from 3 to 1.
• browser.tabs.closeWindowWithLastTab [Boolean]: Change to False, so that Firefox doesn’t accidentally shut down when you close the last tab.
• browser.urlbar.maxRichResults [Integer]: Reduce maximum number of results in Awesome Bar from 12 to 6.
• dom.popup_maximum [Integer]: Reduce maximum number of simultaneous popups from 20 to 3 or 5.
• security.dialog_enable_delay [Integer]: Reduce delay to wait before installing a new extension to 1000 (1 second). Setting to zero is not recommended because of security risks.

11. Advanced Network Settings

These changes are recommended for broadband users with at least a 2 Mbps (256 kB/s) connection.

• network.dnsCacheEntries [Integer]: Increase number of DNS entries cached from default 20 to 512.
• network.dnsCacheExpiration [Integer]: Increase number of seconds DNS entries are cached from default 60 to 3600.
• network.dns.disableIPv6 [Boolean]: Disable IPv6 if your ISP doesn’t support it (most don’t).
• network.http.max-connections [Integer]: Increase maximum number of simultaneous connections to 48 or 96.
• network.http.max-connections-per-server [Integer]: Increase maximum connections per server from default 15 to 24.
• network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server [Integer]: Increase maximum persistent connections per server from default 6 to 12.
• network.http.pipelining [Boolean]: Change to True to enable HTTP Pipelining.
• network.http.pipelining.maxrequests [Integer]: Increase from default 4 to 8.
• network.prefetch-next [Boolean]: This specifies whether Firefox pre-fetches web pages (and associated cookies) even before you visit them. It is most frequently used to pre-load the first result of a Google search. If you want to improve security and don’t want Firefox to load pages you never actually visit, change this to False. See the FAQ for more information.

Did these optimizations make your Firefox 3.5 faster? Tell us in the comments!

(Some of these tips are via Tweakguides Firefox Tweak Guide)

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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One way to download Bing wallpaper images is by using Bing Downloader. You can also check out how to switch wallpapers automatically on all Windows platforms, or with our collection of wallpaper changer apps for Linux. But if you are using Windows 7, you don’t need a separate third-party application.

Long Zheng of I Started Something started the Bing Image Archive, where images shown by Bing to worldwide users are archived for your viewing (and downloading) pleasure. I asked him to get its RSS feed to work with Windows 7 desktop slideshows, and he was happy to oblige. So thanks to Long, we can now get a Bing powered desktop slideshow in Windows 7 in 4 easy steps.

Step 1: Create Theme File

Copy this text in Notepad or any text editor:

[[Theme]
DisplayName=Bing

[Slideshow]
Interval=1800000
Shuffle=1
RssFeed=http://feeds.feedburner.com/bingimages

[Control Panel\Desktop]
TileWallpaper=0
WallpaperStyle=0
Pattern=

[Control Panel\Cursors]
AppStarting=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_working.ani
Arrow=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_arrow.cur
Crosshair=
Hand=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_link.cur
Help=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_helpsel.cur
IBeam=
No=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_unavail.cur
NWPen=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_pen.cur
SizeAll=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_move.cur
SizeNESW=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_nesw.cur
SizeNS=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_ns.cur
SizeNWSE=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_nwse.cur
SizeWE=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_ew.cur
UpArrow=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_up.cur
Wait=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_busy.ani
DefaultValue=Windows Aero
Link=

[VisualStyles]
Path=%SystemRoot%\resources\themes\Aero\Aero.msstyles
ColorStyle=NormalColor
Size=NormalSize
ColorizationColor=0X6B74B8FC
Transparency=1

[MasterThemeSelector]
MTSM=DABJDKT

Step 2: Save Theme File

Save the file as “Bing.theme” on your desktop. Make sure you do not name it Bing.theme.txt accidentally.

Step 3: Activate Bing Theme

Double-click the file to set it as your visual theme. In the Subscribe to RSS Feed? prompt, click Download Attachments.

That’s it! You should now see the Bing theme selected in the My Themes section.

Step 4: Customize Slideshow Settings

You can customize the slideshow settings in the Desktop Background link at the bottom.

You can choose these settings as you like. In resolutions higher than 800×600, the images look better if they are centered. Since the feed contains multiple images from around the world every day, set the slideshow to change pictures every few hours to see all the images.

Make Sure It Works

Depending upon the speed of your internet connection and other variables, it might take time for Windows to download the images. You might need to do these steps if you’ve not used Internet Explorer in Windows 7 too much. In any case, it is a good idea to double-check that the feed is set up correctly.

Start Internet Explorer, go to Tools->Explorer Bars->Feeds or press Ctrl-Shift-J. If you have activated the Bing theme, you should see the Feed URL already added. Click on the feed, so that Internet Explorer loads the feed page on the right.

If you see the following message:

Click Turn on automatic feed updates. Click Yes in the prompt dialog, so that you don’t need to run Internet Explorer to get your Bing wallpapers.

Now you should see images downloaded from the feed. If you wish, you can view the feed properties by clicking the link on the right.

Remember that the Automatically download attached files box should be checked. You can click View Files to see the downloaded images.

Finally, sometimes the theme does not change images even though they are downloaded. Simply right-click on the desktop, select Next desktop background. A logout/login also forces a refresh of the theme.

More Cool Wallpaper Feeds

For the RSS powered desktop slideshow to work in Windows 7, the RSS feed needs to have images in an enclosure item. Thus, for example, Deviant Art feeds did not work at the time of this writing. But you can enjoy Flickr feeds! Simply replace RSSFeed= with the URL of your choice and set DisplayName= with whatever you like in the theme file you created in Notepad. You can set your own favorite feed in Flickr, or here are a few you might want to check out:

• Flickr Wallpapers 1024×768: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/groups_pool.gne?id=40961104@N00&lang=en-us&format=rss_200
• Flickr Wallpapers 1200×800: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/groups_pool.gne?id=78305319@N00&lang=en-us&format=rss_200
• Flickr Wallpapers 1680×1050: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/groups_pool.gne?id=594506@N20&lang=en-us&format=rss_200

Do you enjoy your new wallpapers? Let us know in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Flickchart is dead-simple. It shows you two movies and you pick one over the other. It then shows you two new movies, and you pick again. If you haven’t seen one or both, you replace them with new ones. As you go on making your choices, Flickchart builds your own Top Movies list.

If you need to refresh your memory, or make sure which Aliens it means, you can see additional information about the movies below. You can also see other users’ comments, ranking statistics, and watch movie trailers online if you need help to make your choice. Each time you make a choice, your Top Movies list is updated accordingly, and stats about the movie you picked are also displayed.

There are three kinds of choices Flickchart throws at you:

• Easy: When one movie is obviously better than the other, it’s a no-brainer. Godfather vs. Jurassic Park 3? Next, please.
• Neither: Both movies are crap. Shanghai Surprise vs. Speed 2 Cruise Control? You don’t want to pick either one. But in the spirit of the site, you should.
• Impossible: I just got Citizen Kane vs. Casablanca. Can I close my browser? With such choices, you will curse Flickchart, and come back for more.

You can undo a choice you made if you want to rethink. But soon, you will find yourself with a Top 20 list that doesn’t seem right. There will be a few movies that appear just because they came up in your choices sooner. There are three ways in which you can tweak your Top Movies list.

1. Re-rank a Movie

To move a movie down in your Top 20 list, select it and choose to re-rank it. For example, I am not much into chasing tornadoes, and don’t like Twister in my Top 20 list. So I opted to re-rank it, and Flickchart gives me three more movies pitted against Twister.

2. Use Filters

You can filter by top movies, genre, year, or decade. If you’re interested in getting Star Wars in your list as soon as possible, the By Year option helps. Top Movies gives you the ability to pick and re-order movies within your Top 20, 50, 100, and 250 lists.

3. Remove a Movie

You can also remove a movie from Top Movies list altogether. Simply click to go to that movie’s information page and click Remove From My Flickchart. Your choices for that movie will also be forgotten.

Get Social

Your Top Movies list is publicly visible, even to your friends not using Flickchart (see mine). When faced with a brutal decision, you can share it with your friends via Friendfeed (Twitter and Facebook support is in the works).

For each pick, you can add your comments justifying your choice. Certain matchups can lead to hot debates and discussions. Batman Begins vs. The Dark Knight? You can join in the top discussions around popular matchups. Flickchart shows a nice chronological view of both sides.

Recommendations

Flickchart gives you a list of movies you haven’t seen, which are the highest ranked by other Flickchart users. Similar to Aibek’s tips in What Movie Should I Watch Next, Flickchart will give you recommendations based on the community rankings.

The Charts

Top users have ranked tens of thousands of movies and have hundreds of friends. All rankings are compiled to build Best/Worst Movies of all time lists, which can be filtered by genre, year, decade, etc. For example, you can see the Best Comedy Movies of the 2000s. The more movies you rank, the greater weight your opinion has in building the global list. This is Flickchart’s unique crowdsourced voting model. Netflix integration is planned as well, so you can directly add movies to your Netflix queue from within the site.

The folks behind Flickchart love MakeUseOf readers, so the first 250 people clicking this link will get instant exclusive access. You can still sign up and get an invite even if you miss the boat. A word of caution though: Flickchart is addictive. If you’re a movie lover, it will keep you hooked for just one more pick.

How many movies did you rank? Share your Top 20 list with us and other MakeUseOf readers in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Jinni Recommends You Movies You Should Enjoy (500 Invites!) (19)
• Get Bite-Sized Reviews Of Everything With Blippr (4)
• User Generated Content (Episode II) (2)
• Use Hunch to Answer Your Questions & Make Decisions (4)
• The Filter: How ‘Discovering’ Media Should Be! (4)

Some tweaks available on the web (like opening Explorer at My Computer or using PC Safeguard) are now obsolete because of the updates from Beta to RC. All the tips here work with Windows 7 RC (Build 7100), and most, if not all, will work with the final release.

1. Add Search Providers to Windows 7

Windows 7 allows you to search remote website databases from your desktop, using open standards like Open Search and RSS. Here are some of the popular and useful search providers you can add to Windows 7:

• Bing (via Chakkaradeep)
• Flickr (via Long Zheng)
• Twitter (via Chakkaradeep)
• YouTube
• eBay
• Google News
• Digg
• Deviant Art

You can install these and additional connectors from Windows 7 forums, or get a pack with multiple search providers here.

These search connectors work even within Windows Common Dialogs, such as the Insert Picture dialog from PowerPoint or any other application. You can even drag and drop Flickr images from Explorer search results to copy them to your desktop, without opening any web browser.

2. Single Click Screen Lock

You can lock your computer using the Win+L keyboard shortcut. Here’s another way to do it with a single mouse click. Right-click on your desktop, select New, Shortcut. In Type the location of the item, enter rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation. Click Next, name the shortcut ‘Quick Lock’, and Finish.

If you wish, you can make it look pretty by giving it a lock or keys icon: Right-click, select Properties, click Change Icon, enter shell32.dll, and select any icon you wish. Drag this shortcut and pin it to the taskbar, after which you can delete the desktop shortcut.

3. Customize Sticky Notes

You can format your Sticky Notes, by selecting text and using different keyboard shortcuts as shown in this screen capture:

4. Use New Accessories

Don’t forget to use the revamped accessories in Windows 7. With WordPad, you can open and save Office 2007 .docx and Open Document .odt documents.

The improved Calculator can convert units, and calculate dates, fuel economy, mortgage and lease payments.

Paint has new brush strokes, shapes, and grid support. Paint and WordPad have Print Preview and the Ribbon UI, which brings customizability and live formatting previews.

5. Use Check Boxes in Windows Explorer

You can select non-adjacent files in Explorer using Ctrl-click, but there is an easier way using check boxes. In Explorer, click Organize, then select Folder and search options.

On the View tab, under Advanced Settings, scroll down to select Use check boxes to select items. Now you can easily select multiple items using only the mouse.

6. Shortcut to Run Program as Administrator

You can Ctrl+Shift+Click on a taskbar icon to run the application as an Administrator with full rights (provided your account has permissions). Simply Shift+Right-Click on any program shortcut to run it as a different user, if for example you need higher privileges when logged in with your child’s account.

7. Boost performance with ReadyBoost

ReadyBoost improves your system performance by using faster USB Flash Drives instead of slower hard disks for system operations. It works best using flash drives with at least 1 GB of storage. Simply insert your flash drive, and if it meets certain performance benchmarks, Windows 7 will ask you if you want to use it for ReadyBoost and recommend the size to reserve.

8. Tweak Windows Search/Defender Services

By default, Windows indexes all files appearing under all your libraries, email, and offline files. You can reduce the time and resources spent in indexing by tweaking this to your actual needs.

Go to Control Panel, then Indexing Options. Windows 7 shows a list of locations currently being indexed. Click on Modify to choose only those locations where you perform frequent searches.

You can also disable Windows Search and Windows Defender services, which can take up system resources. If you do not search for files, images, documents, etc. using Windows Explorer, or use another search/indexing program, then you should disable Windows Search service. If, and only if, you use a third-party anti-virus program that is also anti-malware (the best ones are), you can also disable the Windows Defender service.

Go to Start, enter and run msconfig. From the Services tab, uncheck the box for the service you wish to disable, and reboot for the changes to take effect.

9. Secure USB Drives with BitLocker

Secure your USB flash drives using BitLocker encryption. Right-click on your USB drive in My Computer, select Turn on BitLocker and follow the instructions to protect sensitive data on your thumb drives.

The next time you use your USB drive on another computer, it will prompt you for the password before allowing you read-only access to your flash drive. You can even use the drive on older computers running Windows XP/Vista.

10. Create a System Recovery Disc

A system recovery disc helps you in situations where Windows cannot start successfully. Your Windows 7 installation disc also serves as a recovery disc. When Windows 7 comes pre-installed on computers, you will need to create a system recovery disc.

Click Start, enter and run recdisc.exe. Insert a blank CD/DVD in your burner, and click Create Disc.

**Caution**

Follow the next two tips only if you’re knowledgeable enough to edit the Windows registry. Before making any changes, make sure you back up your registry as described earlier on MakeUseOf.

11. Faster Thumbnail Previews

The taskbar shows thumbnail previews of opened windows when you hover the mouse over the program icon. By default, it takes a little time for the preview to appear. Make the previews appear faster with this registry tweak:

Go to Start, enter and run regedit. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse. On the right, open the MouseHoverTime key and reduce its value from the default 400 to around 150.

Be careful, as decreasing it further may cause problems.

12. Faster Shutdown

Start regedit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control. Find the WaitToKillServiceTimeout key on the right, double-click to edit and change it from the default 12000 (12 seconds) to 2000 (2 seconds) or above.

This setting tells Windows how long to wait before prompting you that a service is not responding to the shut down request. This may help speed up your shutdown if you have any such services running.

These are some of the best Windows 7 tips we found. Did we miss any of your favorites? Share with us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How To Get Aero Shake, Aero Peek & Aero Snap Features In Vista & XP (9)
• 15 Best Windows 7 Tips and Hacks (25)
• Your Easy Guide to Windows 7 Themes (16)
• Windows 7 Libraries Explained – And Why You Want Them (48)
• Vista Switcher – Replace Windows’ Alt-Tab With Something Cooler (6)

But now you want more. You want the cool tips and tricks that make Windows 7 fun!

So here are the best ones to help you get the most out of your new OS. In this article, we will focus on the Windows 7 interface to get you started on the road to becoming a Windows 7 Power User. In Part 2, we will be looking at advanced tips for usability, performance, and security.

1. Use Keyboard Shortcuts

Using the mouse, you can drag-‘n-dock windows to either side of the screen, or drag it to the top to maximize it. These keyboard shortcuts are even faster:

• Win+Left Arrow and Win+Right Arrow dock the window to the left and right side of the screen
• Win+Up Arrow and Win+Down Arrow maximize and restore/minimize
• Win+M minimizes everything
• Alt+Up, Alt+Left Arrow, Alt+Right Arrow navigate to parent folder, or browse Back and Forward through folders in Explorer
• Win+Home minimizes/restores all open windows except the active window
• Alt+Win+# accesses the Jump List of program number ‘#’ on the taskbar

2.Rearrange System Tray Icons

You can rearrange icons on the taskbar as you wish and start new (or switch to running) instances of the first ten taskbar programs using Win+1, Win+2, and so on. The cool thing is you can also rearrange system tray icons. Reorder them on the tray or move them outside or back in the tray. Take control of what you want to always keep an eye on, and from which apps you’ll require notifications.

3. Access Jump Lists with the Left Mouse Button

Jump Lists usually show up when you right-click on a taskbar icon. However, they can also be accessed by holding the left mouse button and dragging upwards. If you’re using a laptop touchpad or a touch screen, this is convenient because you do not have to click any button to access a context menu.

4. Add Any Folder to Favorites

You can add any library or folder to the Favorites section in Windows Explorer. To add a folder, navigate to it in Explorer, right-click Favorites in the left navigation pane, and select Add current location to Favorites. Now you get quick access to your favorite folders in all File->Save As dialogs!

5. Pin Frequently Used Folders to the Taskbar

Right-click, drag, and pin your favorite folders to Windows Explorer on the taskbar. They will now show up in the Jump List when you right click on Explorer giving you quick access to your favorite folders.

6. Pin Control Panel to the Taskbar

You cannot pin the Control Panel to the taskbar via the Start Menu or by drag and drop. Open the Control Panel and right-click its taskbar icon to pin it to the taskbar. An advantage of this is that Control Panel’s Jump List allows quick access to recently used functions.

7. Create Keyboard Shortcuts for Programs

You can create keyboard shortcuts for any program in Windows 7. Right-click the program icon and select Properties. Select the Shortcut tab, click in Shortcut key, to set the keyboard shortcut for that program.

8. Open Command Prompt in Any Folder

Like the command prompt? Miss the ‘Open Command Window Here’ Windows XP power toy? Press ‘Shift’ when right-clicking on a folder to get that option in the context menu. This also works on the desktop. No power toy required!

9. View Expanded ‘Send To’ Menu

Press Shift when right-clicking on a folder to get an expanded Send To menu.

10. Adjust Screen Text with Clear Type

Use Clear Type Tuner for the best look on your LCD monitor or laptop screen. Run ‘cttune.exe’ from the Start Menu search box, or go to the Control Panel Display applet, and select Adjust ClearType Text from the left.

11. Get Exact Colors On Your Screen

If you are an artist or you work with colors, use the Calibrate Color option in the Control Panel Display applet or run dccw.exe from the Start Menu search box. You can adjust gamma, brightness, contrast, and color balance, ensuring that colors are displayed correctly on your screen.

12. Customize the Power Button

If you restart your computer more often than you shut it down, change the default Shutdown power button to Restart. Right-click on Start, select Properties, and choose the Power button action that you use the most.

13. Customize Number of Items in Jump Lists & Start Menu

Right-click Start, select Properties, click Customize and choose the number of recent programs to be shown in the Start Menu and the number of items displayed in Jump Lists from the Start Menu Size section below.

14. Search Internet from the Start Menu

Enable Internet search from the Start Menu using your default browser. Run GPEDIT.MSC from the Start Menu search box to start the Group Policy Editor. In the left pane, go to User Configuration->Administrative Templates->Start Menu and Taskbar. In the right pane, right-click to Edit and Enable Add Search Internet link to Start Menu.

15. Add Videos to Start Menu

Windows 7 does not place a link to your videos on the Start Menu by default. To add a link to your videos on the Start Menu, right-click Start, select Properties, click on Customize. In the Videos section at the bottom, choose Display as a link.

Did you like these tips? Tell us or share your tricks with us in the comments! Don’t forget to watch out for Part 2!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How To Get Aero Shake, Aero Peek & Aero Snap Features In Vista & XP (9)
• 12 More Windows 7 Tips & Hacks (14)
• Your Easy Guide to Windows 7 Themes (16)
• Windows 7 Libraries Explained – And Why You Want Them (48)
• Vista Switcher – Replace Windows’ Alt-Tab With Something Cooler (6)

I didn’t have to look far: we covered FlauntR, a free photo editing download, here at MakeUseOf when it was in its Alpha stage. Register with FlauntR, and see how you can use its picasR function in 3 easy steps to quickly give your pictures that million-dollar painting look!

After logging in, click the picasR button in the top left row to get to the painting effects functionality.

If this is your first time using flauntR, the interface might seem complex at first, but I assure you that it’s not. The upper left box holds your source picture, the lower left box holds the painting you would like to use as a reference. Results of your magic appear in the center. Simple!

Step 1: Get Your Photo

From the bottom section, you can upload a picture from your computer, or directly import a picture from Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, etc. The flauntR tab shows your pictures saved in flauntR albums.

If you upload a new picture from your computer, switch to the flauntR tab to access your album and drag your picture to the workspace. I selected a simple photograph of a bunch of trees on a hill as an example.

Step 2: Select Famous Painting

From the famous paintings gallery on the right, select any painting. You can choose a subject that matches your picture (portrait, landscape, etc.) or you can get creative by blending anything you fancy. If you have a particular painting in mind that is not listed in the gallery, you can get its image from the Internet and use that as your reference image.

For example, let us select Arnold Böcklin’s The Sacred Wood in the symbolist style. Your desired reference image appears in your workspace below your original picture.

You can get help, zoom into the picture, or select a portion of the picture, using the icons at the top of both your picture and the reference image. If you wish to selectively apply the desired effect to only a part of your photo, use the selection icon. I liked the simple one-click process, but you can get creative if you want to apply effects of different paintings to different parts of your picture!

Step 3: Abracadabra!

Click Apply! Here are the results of my quick experiment as compared to my original picture:

The ‘Editing Tools’ drop-down toolbox lets you save your image, reset it back to original, and more. Once you’ve saved your new picture, you can easily download it, or share your ‘artwork’ with your friends on Flickr, Facebook, and other networks.

The painting color effect works best with outdoor pictures, but you can also use famous portrait paintings as your reference images. I found that I could work with large image sizes with no restrictions on file size. The ability to apply special effects, save, download, and share, are all free with no strings attached.

Which paintings did you use for your pictures? Share your results with us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• [Google Picasa 101] – How To Edit Your Photos (14)
• Stitch Panoramic Photos Together with CleVR (19)
• How to Morph Into Your Favorite Celebrity Lookalike (8)
• How to Make Items or People Stand out in Black & White Photos (25)
• How To Add A Cool Tattoo To Your Photo in Photoshop (13)

Let’s see how it works in 3 easy steps.

Step 1: Upload Photo

In order to save and share your cool morph creations, you do need to register at the site. With 30 million+ registered members and a clearly defined ‘no spam, no sharing’ privacy policy, I had no qualms registering with MyHeritage.com.

To begin, rather than using my photo for the morph, I decided to use MJ since that was how the whole idea started in the first place. Clicking on the ‘Celebrity Morph’ tab takes you to the following screen where you upload your photo.

After you upload your photo, it runs its face recognition magic, and you are presented with the best matching celebrity lookalike.

With over 4000 celebrities in its database, the site is sure to find someone you like and look alike! You can browse between a few matching celebrities for your target using the little green arrows. I usually found at least 6-10 choices when experimenting with photographs of different people. I chose another influential African American celebrity idol whose interview of MJ is fondly remembered by many people:

Step 2: Prepare Morph

Click Next to go to the next step, where we prepare the morph. Celebrity Morph automatically sets reference points on the eyes. All you have to do is add a few, so that the morph becomes realistic. Click the ‘+’ button to add points, and the hand icon to position them correctly. For best results, choose the borders of the face, the corners of the mouth, and the tip of the nose, like this:

You can choose the kind of output you want using the slider at the bottom: a still photo, a brief video, or a long video up to 150 frames. Click Preview to view the video:

Step 3: Publish Morph

Without an easy way to save and share this with friends, this exercise would almost be pointless. Fortunately, the guys at Celebrity Heritage seem to know this as well, since they’ve made it very simple to share your morph video on various social networks.

If your preferred network is not there, or you wish to embed it in your own site, the ‘Other’ tab gives you the HTML code to embed it wherever you wish. I checked out posting to Facebook, and after the usual authorization process, it was very simple and worked flawlessly. Of course, even if you do not publish it anywhere, the site saves your morphs under your profile. You can create and play with as many morphs as you like.

This can be a cool gift for your friends: take their photos, morph them into a celebrity, and surprise them! You can also use the site to create a Celebrity Collage. Simply upload your photo, select from various collage layouts, and share it. Other features are a look-alike meter to find out which parent your child resembles more, and auto-tagging people in photographs using face recognition.

You might also want to check out these previously featured sites on MakeUseOf:

• Celebrity Match Up: Find your celebrity lookalike
• MorphThing: Morph any two photos together into one
• Yearbook Yourself: Give your photos a retro look

So who did you morph yourself into? Share with us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Stitch Panoramic Photos Together with CleVR (19)
• How to Make Items or People Stand out in Black & White Photos (25)
• [Google Picasa 101] – How To Edit Your Photos (14)
• The Top 3 Apps to Batch Rename, Convert & Resize Photos (Windows only) (15)
• Superimpose Your Face into Other Photos with Photo505 (10)

As you can see, those tips are for the “beginner” online socialist.

Here are some more to help you become a power user of social media and networking sites.

11. Use Your Mobile for Social Updates

If you spend a lot of time with your mobile phone, use applications that interface with multiple networks. Access Flickr via mobile. Use CellSpin to post video, voice, photos, or text to multiple social networks. Chatterous is great to chat with your existing IM buddies, while MobiLuck is a good mobile friend-finder. Check out Hellotxt for updating your status across 40+ networks, and Mobypicture for sharing pictures/audio/video.

12.  Engage and Participate

Are you sharing a lot of content in your blog posts, photos, videos, and bookmarks, but not receiving many comments, ratings or feedback?

Sometimes we get so caught up in our ‘create/discover-post-share’ routine that we forget to listen, view, comment and rate others’ posts. Use your social map visualization to see where your content is landing. That’s where you need to spend time. Engage and participate in the community. The more you give, the more you get.

13. Use an Aggregator

Choose an aggregator service that supports your favorite networks. Use only one service and make sure your content is not being pushed twice. Avoid spamming your friends! Select from some of the popular aggregator services like Friendfeed, Plaxo Pulse, or Lifestream.fm.

An important consideration is data portability. Some lifestreaming services like Profilactic and Swurl have shut down or are struggling, so choose a service that aims to make all your data portable across services like Chi.mp.

14. Unleash the Power of Feeds

RSS Feeds are very powerful. For example, you can get an RSS feed update every time you Digg an article or save a bookmark in Delicious. Flickr provides 3 different feeds for your photostream. All Twitters have a feed. Use feeds in combination with your aggregator services, and in sites like Facebook. Use feeds in widgets in your blog’s sidebar. Use them in your HTML email signatures. The possibilities are limited to your imagination!

If you are the DIY type and want to get creative with RSS Feeds, use Yahoo Pipes.

15. Create a Portable Online Identity

If you have signed up with a lot of sites and services, letting people find you on all of them can be a daunting task. Use specialized services like Retaggr or DandyID to create an online identity that is portable and consolidates all your web locations. Your profile can then be easily shared as widgets in blogs, in email signatures, posted to Facebook and more.

16. Merge Your Social Media

Your social media (photos, status, bookmarks, etc.) lies scattered across different websites. It is not easy to share a single URL that encapsulates all your social media together. There are some services that aim to help you do just that.

Cliqset lets you merge all your scattered data and share it with people, applications, or devices. With Chi.mp, you can get your own personal yourownname.mp domain and website for free, and it automatically feeds many of your social interactions to your site. With Gizapage, your contacts can see your social media presence across several networks in a tabbed interface at yourname.gizapage.com.

17. Auto Sync Your Profile

Want to change your profile picture across several networks at once? Atomkeep helps you keep your profiles in sync across 23 social networks as well as cool stuff like keeping your resumes in sync across job sites.

18. Use Dashboards

Dashboards let you view and update statuses in real-time across multiple networks. Since Twitter is the de-facto real-time service, all dashboard applications are centered around Twitter. TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop are popular desktop clients that also let you view and update Facebook status feeds.

Peoplebrowsr is a web-based dashboard that provides a column-view of custom groups that combine friends and updates across many services at once. It supports a plethora of other services Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, Friendfeed, YouTube, etc. and is also available as a desktop application.

19. Manage Your Reputation

Social Networks are powerful. Whether you are an individual or a business, you should track your reputation by what people are saying about you. The viral nature of social networks can cause reputations to swing very fast.

Setup Google Alerts to monitor your brand name, or use MonitorThis to subscribe to a feed of search results from 26 search engines. Keotag lets you search and subscribe to everything in the blogosphere by tags, and it supports several different search engines like Technorati, Digg, Delicious, etc.

Use RSS feeds of Twitter searches to monitor mentions of you or your brand. You can use Facebook Lexicon to monitor what’s being written on Facebook Walls. Use BackType to monitor comments around the web, including all comments of specific people who may be intent on tarnishing your reputation. Use Social Mention for real-time search across social media networks and to set up social media alerts. Trendrr gives you automated tracking and reporting for various types of social media. With the help of BoardTracker and BoardReader, you can search forums and discussion boards to see what people are actually saying about your brand.

20. Live the Real Life!

Social media and networking can get very addictive. Remind yourself to take adequate breaks from your online social life, and spend time offline with your real-life friends and family. In case you forgot, that’s what being social really means!

Did you find these tips useful? Do you have any that we missed? Do share with us in the comments!

small>Image Credit: єvαиdяσ иαรciмєитσ

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 20 Tips to Define And Manage Your Social Networks [Part 1] (46)
• Legacy Locker – Life Insurance for Your Online Identity (4)
• Retaggr Lets People Know Who You Are (10)
• Psst…Do You Plurk? (20)
• Manage your Online Social Life with SecondBrain (11)

I no longer knew what I had dugg, found delicious or stumbled upon. Keeping track of groups of friends on multiple networks, commenting on their updates, updating my status, responding to email, and pretty soon, I had ‘social networking fatigue’.

If this sounds familiar, don’t lose heart: these tips may help. If you have not yet dived deep into social waters, these tips can help you stay afloat and in control.

1. Visualize Your Social Map

Use pen and paper or mind mapping services like MindMeister to better define your social networks or your social map. There are several ways in which you can group and design your lifestream: Capture–Process–Share, Discover–Consume–Collaborate, Create-Share-Discover-Collect, etc.

Don’t be disheartened because it may be a mess. The process of visualizing it will bring much-needed clarity, and help you identify what you need to change and where.

2. Define Your Target Audience

For each network where you share data, define your target audience. Who are the target audience of your blog, your photo-sharing account, your Facebook/MySpace account? Whom do you want to interact with on email, IM, Twitter? Do not mix family with friends, or friends with business.

Use multiple accounts in Twitter so that your tweets are relevant to your followers. This also helps you set appropriate privacy settings for that network: I might wish to keep my family Twitter account updates protected, and keep the other one public.

3. Use a Password Manager

When we sign up with a lot of different web services, we are tempted to use the same password across several websites. The problem with using different passwords was remembering all of them. With Password Managers to the rescue, you can now have both security and convenience. Never use the same password for multiple sites.

Use a browser-independent desktop application like KeePass, or LastPass, which integrates with all the major browsers.

4. Separate Private & Public Photo-Sharing

Use two or more photo-sharing sites for different types of photos. One example: private photos go to Picasa, friendly photos go to Facebook, public images/photos go to Flickr. I find this a safe and convenient approach because all social networking sites keep changing their privacy settings and options regularly. I do not want to risk my private photos being exposed just because some site changed its default options and I was too busy to notice it.

5. Use One Social Bookmarking Site

Social bookmarking helps keep all your bookmarks together, easily search and tag them, and share them with your friends. Do not spread your bookmarks across different sites. Choose Digg, Delicious, Redditt, or any other service you fancy and stick to it.

For example if you use Delicious, get the Delicious for Google Reader script to save bookmarks directly from Google Reader, and digg.licio.us Greasemonkey script to save Digg stories on Delicious. If you’re spread out across different sites, look for export/import options to consolidate.

If you are starting afresh, check out Twine. Twine uses artificial intelligence to automatically tag and sort your bookmarks.

6. Use a Gravatar

Use an avatar that looks good in both 64×64 and 128×128 sizes and save them for reference. Using a gravatar helps you get a consistent avatar across multiple sites. Gravatars also help create a brand identity for your profile, allowing people to instantly recognize you. Not sure how to get a gravatar? It’s simple!

7. Use Social Surfing

Do you browse a lot of websites, open separate tabs to social sites, and copy-paste to share interesting stuff with your friends? Or keep several tabs open to check updates in Twitter, Facebook, and Friendfeed? If you’re using IE or Firefox, get the Yoono plugin to make life easier. Yoono also supports popular IM networks. Or if you’re a power social user, try using the Flock browser.

8. Integrate IM, Email, and Social Networking

If you use a browser that doesn’t yet support plugins or are a heavy user of IM, check out the latest version of Digsby or Trillian. Both of them support all popular webmail accounts, IM networks, and social networking sites.

9. Use a Consistent Username

For people to easily recognize you, use a common username across all sites. Use specialized sites like Knowem, Namechk, or Usernamecheck to check availability of your preferred username. Maintain consistent brand names across networks using these tools. As individuals, avoid signing up on services you are never going to use.

10. Track Your Comments

Ever leave a comment on some blog or site and never visit it again? You may be disgruntling those who respond to your comment with a question. Get control of your comments across blogs, sites, and social networks, with comment tracking systems like BackType.

In Part 2, we will look at tips for more seasoned social networking aficionados. Were these helpful for a start? Are there any aspects of social networking you need help on? Let us know in the comments!

Image Credit: Brian Solis, єvαиdяσ иαรciмєитσ

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 20 Tips to Define And Manage Your Social Networks [Part 2] (9)
• Legacy Locker – Life Insurance for Your Online Identity (4)
• Retaggr Lets People Know Who You Are (10)
• Psst…Do You Plurk? (20)
• Manage your Online Social Life with SecondBrain (11)

Many people perceive dreams to be important because:

• Dreams are important for our overall well-being and health. Dream deprivation leads to irritability, disorientation, and depression.
• Dreams are our connection with our subconscious mind. They reveal suppressed emotions, as well as our innermost desires and fears.
• Recurring dreams may point to an unresolved issue in our lives. This helps us understand how to reduce stress and where we may need help.
• Dreams can provide guidance and inspiration for ideas and creativity.

A lot of information about understanding why people dream, and analyzing your own dreams, is now easily available on the web. A simple search reveals dozens of sites that claim to help you interpret your dreams. Unfortunately, many of them are outdated or are marketing gimmicks for selling books or premium services. Let us see some of the best free sites and how you can make use of them.

Remember Your Dreams

The first step is to sleep well. Perhaps these sounds to help you relax and sleep can help? Typically, five minutes after we wake up, half the content of dreams is forgotten. After ten minutes, 90% is lost. Here are some guides to help you remember dreams:

• WikiHow provides a 10-Step guide and some tips to remembering dreams
• Reader’s Digest offers 7 ways for better dream recall
• Tips and resources from an expert to increase dream awareness and recall

This should get you started, but remember to be patient and persistent. Find out what works best for you.

Search Online Dream Dictionaries

If you don’t want to sign-up anywhere but simply want some quick clues to interpret a dream, use online dream dictionaries.

No single dictionary or site can provide a completely correct interpretation of your dream. This is because every dream symbol, object, and theme can mean different things to different people, depending upon our culture, personality, upbringing, and experiences. These dream dictionaries are still useful however, because many symbols do have universal meanings, and some dictionaries offer multiple interpretation of symbols. Remember to apply the meaning in the context of your life and the recent past.

• Dreams Dictionary aggregates multiple dream dictionaries and provides a search front-end to various domains of dream interpretation like psychology, theology, etc.
• FateDreams gives you a searchable Dream Interpretation Dictionary with over 10,000 keywords you can search.
• Spirit Community has a unique Biblical and spiritual dream dictionary.
• DreamVisions has a ‘Dream Analyzer’, where you describe your dream in a form, and get back your dream’s symbols and their meanings.
• Free Dream Interpretation has a searchable Dream Dictionary of over 3000 dream meanings.

Ultimately, only you can interpret your dreams, using these different resources, and tailoring them to your unique situation. Some people think that the dictionary approach is outdated and irrelevant. DreamWiki is an interesting site for learning the art and technique of dream interpretation, but is relatively new with minimal content. It deviates from the dictionary-based approach and focuses on interpreting dream behaviors in the context of the dreamer’s life.

Best All Round Dream Sites

The following sites provide several resources related to dreams. They are useful for those who are really interested in learning more about their dreams.

Dreammoods

• Background information on dreams including research, dream types, recall tips and dream theory
• Searchable Dream Dictionary covering over 4000 keywords and symbols with 12000 different meanings.
• Quick guides for universally common dreams like flying, chasing, etc. and dream themes like food, birds, and characters.
• Discussion forum section with thousands of members in different forums for different types of dreams.
• Dream Bank with a hundred-odd real user dreams interpreted by experts.

Dream Central

• Dream Dictionary – limited, not searchable.
• Basics of Dream Analysis, covering themes and common symbols
• Discussion Forums for interpretation, nightmares, prophetic dreams, and discussing dream symbols

Dreamsleep.net

• Lots of articles about common types of dreams, universal dream symbols and experiences
• Easily accessible Dream Dictionary with alphabetical drop downs and quick links
• Free Online Dream Interpretation Forum where you can discuss dream interpretations with other members

Join Online Dream Communities

You can use an Online Sleep Tracker to keep track of your sleeping patterns, but it doesn’t help with dreams. The best way to keep in touch with the world of your dreams is to record them in a journal and join a community. While you can indeed record your dreams in a blogging platform like LiveJournal and join the Community of Dreams’, there are unique advantages to joining focused sites that have built a community to share, rate, and interpret each others dreams. They offer automated keyword tagging to dream symbols, classification of dreams, detection of trends, and so on.

Dream Journal lets you record your dreams privately or publicly. The site has over 9000 active users with over 120,000 dreams.

Dream Crowd has built an active social community where you can keep a dream log, share your dreams with others, and comment on other’s dreams. The site automatically tags keywords and phrases in your dreams that are hooked up to its dream dictionary for quick interpretation.

Unleash the Power of Lucid Dreams

Lucid dreams are dreams where you know that you are dreaming and can control your dream. This lets you dream your fantasies, have superhero powers, psychic powers, travel in space, or whatever you wish. There are a few sites devoted to the unique world of lucid dreams:

Lucid Dreaming is a popular social-networking community exploring and documenting lucid dreams.

Lucipedia is another good site for learning, recording, sharing, and discussing lucid dreams.

Dream Views has a good guide to developing the art of lucid dreaming, and also an active lucid dreamers forum.

So these are some of the sites to help you understand and enjoy your dreams meaningfully. Was your favorite dream site missed? Do let us know in the comments! And oh yes, sweet dreams!

Image credit: Chris Gin

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At the outset, let me confess that machine translation usually sucks. You’re much better off with human translators any day. But what do you do for real-time chat? Till now, one had to use a different IM client like MeGlobe, to chat in a foreign language. Now, you can use Microsoft’s TBot. No installation required!

Microsoft has an impressive array of translation tools for users, webmasters, and developers, like Live Translator, but the release of Windows Live Messenger Translation bot (TBot) last year is still not widely known. Using TBot, you can chat with others in up to 13 foreign languages, or even chat with TBot itself to practice learning a foreign language. What’s more, you do not actually need to use Windows Live Messenger. You can use any IM client you like, as long as it supports the MSN protocol. Let’s see how you can use TBot in 3 easy steps to chat in a foreign language.

Step #1: Add TBot to your Contacts

To get started, you will first need to add TBot to your contact list.

From the Live Messenger toolbar, select the ‘Add a contact’ option as shown above, and add ‘mtbot@hotmail.com’ as the contact address.

Click ‘Send Invitation’ on the next screen to add TBot to your contact list. There is no need for any personal message. You should now see ‘Translator’ as one of your available contacts as shown below:

That’s it. You are all set!

Step #2: Invite TBot to a Conversation

When you want TBot’s translation services to help in a conversation, click the ‘Invite’ menu in the conversation window.

From the contact list that appears, select ‘Translator (Available, Agent)’.

TBot enters the conversation and asks you to select the target language.

I chose Russian as an example, and typed ‘12’:

To check out the list of TBot’s commands, you can enter ‘TBot ?’:

Step #3: Chat in a Foreign Language

For the sake of this post, to imitate two people chatting, I used two different IM clients – Windows Live Messenger and Pidgin. Let us suppose I’m English Dude with Live Messenger, chatting with Russian Gal who is averse to installing any Microsoft software and thus uses Pidgin on Linux. Russian Gal uses the ‘TBot change’ command to select Russian as her Source Language:

With TBot all set to translate at both ends, both of them now chat. This is what English Dude sees in his Live Messenger:

While Russian Gal sees the following in her Pidgin client:

As you can see, English Dude and Russian Gal are having an engaging conversation with the help of real-time translation by TBot.

TBot has his own profile in Windows Live Spaces, where you will also find a mini-FAQ. If you’re traveling in a foreign country, add TBot to Windows Live Messenger on your Windows Mobile device to get a free Translation Assistant with you!

Have you tried any other real-time translation software? How was your experience with TBot? Do let us know in the comments!

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